DEAF_00 Digital Dive - Online Archives
A closed workshop about online archives, part of DEAF00 (2000).
Knowbotic Research at DEAF_00 Digital Dive
On Wednesday, November 15 and Friday, November 17, a closed workshop meeting took place. The first day focused on content, concepts, structures and software development in the context of online media art archives.
The Digital Dive workshop about online archives started with an introductory public presentation by Thomax Kaulmann, Jennifer Crowe and the Flusser Audio Archiv; moderated by Erik Kluitenberg, who also presented the final results of the workshop to the public.
The parallel developments of an immense and uncoordinated increase in online material on the one hand, and the volatile nature of that material on the other, have spurred the development of content portals and online archives which seek to structure and maintain the available cultural productions. Audio and video streaming technology, together with the ubiquity of computing devices and the emergence of translocal, networked collaboration initiatives, are the breeding ground for extensive live-netcasting and instant archiving activities.
Themes of November 15
content; putting the world into a database
- the limits of a database: what information do you incorporate, what do you leave out?
- the purpose of the content: for intranet (internal use) or WWW (public use)
- getting started with a first and basic set of information, not knowing exactly how this will extend in the future - how to incorporate openness for change
format; different kinds of media, physical and virtual, tangible and digitalised
- representing physical objects into a database (e.g. books, videotapes)
- representing unstable/interactive media into a database (e.g. performances, websites)
- metadata to create a generic system on top of different kind of media (descriptions, keywords, classification and description standards)
structure; relating everything to everything
- universally applicable datamodels?
- the consequences of datamodels for archives and even organisations
software & development; a tailor-made suit
- software solutions for online archives
- open source software & custom-made solutions
- the technical development of online archives: are technical solutions developed internally (by the organisation itself), or externally?
The second day focused on audience and interfaces: users and production groups for online media art archives.
Themes of November 17
publics & interfaces
- about different kinds of interfacing on a database (back-end, front-end, overview)
- about different goals for different types of users (researchers, festival visitors, press, students, etc.)
- user & producer communities; helping each other building online archives
- cooperation and partnerships of organisations & companies in online archives
- about sharing hardware, software and capacity for different archives: interoperability issues
- collaborative systems; connecting databases, creating rich environments
- about making a global interface on different databases
- interpassive users; users participating in online archives
- about participation & moderation
