Media Art History Expert Meeting

Welcome to the Expert Meeting!

When: Thu 17 October | Where: LI-MA, Amsterdam, Netherlands | Language: English

Digital art communities, festivals, and individual artists provide alternative practices for engaging with digital cultural heritage and commons initiatives. These examples illustrate effective practices in data modeling, metadata management, and database systems usage. However, connecting these practices to larger ecosystems of institutional (museum) archives, often raises significant challenges due to the centering of artists and artworks, rather than events and temporary communities of practice.

Open ecosystems, such as the Wikimedia projects, are renowned for high-quality reference and introductory materials. Despite this, emerging cultural practices frequently encounter obstacles within these environments particularly when inserting or connecting alternative methods to standardized systems. This expert meeting aims to address these issues by focusing on the role of linked open data in cultural production and the preparation of metadata for integration into larger archival systems.

This event is part of the 2024 AvoinGLAM commemoration of the work of Minna Tarkka (1960–2023).

Program 17 October

Welcome

9.30–12.00 LI-MA@LAB 111

9.30 Coffee
10.00 Welcome by Gaby

Position statements

Chaired by Annet Dekker, recording by Chiara Borgonovo

The brief introductions to projects the participants worked on will focus on the main or recurring challenges encountered when working with Wikimedia/data systems, in particular in relation to the transfer of the project to, or collaborating with institutional (museum) archives. For example: What are the obstacles when introducing alternative standards, metadata, or registration systems.

10.00–11.00 Position statements ~5min

Dušan Barok / Monoskop
Annet Dekker / University of Amsterdam
Tereza Havlíková / Zentrum für Netzkunst (remote)
Sanneke Huisman & Joost Dofferhof / LI-MA
Andreas Kohlbecker / ZKM
Hanno Lans
Philipp Messner / Critical Media Lab
Andrew Paterson / AvoinGLAM, Pixelache
Lozana Rossenova / Open Science Lab in TIB Hannover
Susanna Ånäs / AvoinGLAM, MEHI, ISEA94

Blueprint

The blueprint will be a short document outlining core tasks and concerns for small organizations using different (public / private) Wikimedia platforms for their media archives. Ideally, it will cover all major workflow points from data preparation, cleaning, upload through to enrichment, publication and further sharing. The work will be facilitated by Lozana Rossenova.

11.00–12.00 Define the scope of work.
- 12.00–13.00 Lunch in the restaurant, continue in smaller groups spread over the location
13.00–14.30 Workshop on the blueprint in groups. Contributing to several should be possible. Produce (drafts for) statements.
- 14.30–14.45 Break

Rounding up

Small cinema

14.45–16 Convene for discussion and rounding up

Project partners

Project initiated by AvoinGLAM and LIMA and supported by Wikimedia Netherlands, Wikimedia CH, and Wikimedia Norge and the participants and their organizations.