ADA - Archive of digital Art

The Archive of Digital Art (ADA) is the pioneering archive in the field of Media Art and its histories, founded by Prof. Oliver Grau in 1999 archival project to document the aesthetics, subject as well as technology of Media Art. ADA est. 50.000 individual objects of cultural includes 947 total artists and scholars, 4.060 bibliographic entries, and some 1.4700 institution listings.

Today, ADA continues its mission as a “living archive” for Community Science, representing user-generated content from over 601 Members from across the globe through Social Web 2.0 and Semantic Web 3.0 features. ADA is the longest-running and most-comprehensive database available on Media Art. As concerted and sustained documentation strategy in the field, ADA affords a clear and present opportunity: its data is robust, accrued through Open Community Science. ADA is directed by an international Advisory Board and edited by expert academicians in the Lab for Digital Humanities at Danube University as well as external specialist programmers. ADA is a PostgreSQL Open Source Database, written in C++ programming language, with a Linux kernel operating system, and a TYPO3 content management system. An online service, ADA provides a research tool for academic and nonacademic stakeholders involved in the production and preservation of Media Art. The Team regularly launches new extensions, such as the Light Box and Online Exhibitions, which support correspondence analysis as well as community participation. Community Members actively maintain their own profile pages, upload information resources, perform research, search for collaborators, establish contact, and build co-operations. With an Open Access policy (copyright permissions granted with membership), ADA supports the collaborative “bottom-up” participation of more than 600 Community Members (out of over 5.000 applicants). A neutral gatekeeping system requires these artists and scholars to have min. 5 exhibitions or publications for evaluation. Once registered, images, texts, audio, and video files are accepted for upload as objects of cultural data.