Documenting Media Art: An Archive and Bridging Thesaurus for MediaArtHistories

While Media Art has evolved into a critical field at the intersection of art, science and technology, a significant loss threatens this art form due to rapid technological obsolescence and static documentation strategies. Addressing these challenges, the Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research was developed to advance an Archive of Digital Art. Through an innovative strategy of "collaborative archiving," social Web 2.0 features foster the engagement of the international media art community and a "bridging thesaurus" linking the extended documentation of the Archive with other databases of "traditional" art history facilitates interdisciplinary and transhistorical comparative analyses.