Christina RADNER

Project manager Ars Electronica Archive

Ars Electronica, Linz (AT)

BIO

Christina Radner currently is the responsible project manager for the Ars Electronica Archive in Linz, Austria. In 2009 she got her master´s degree in art history at the University of Vienna. At an internship at the Art Brut Museum Gugging in Klosterneuburg near Vienna, she got a first insight into the archive work of a museum. She was hired project-based, to help work on an artist´s estate and to prepare a retrospective and comprehensive catalogue of works. In 2013 she moved back to Upper Austria and started her work in the Ars Electronica Archive Team. Since 2015 she is the responsible project manager for the Archive and part of the Festival/Prix/Archive Core Team of Ars Electronica.

 

Abstract

Researched, used, exhibited and remembered content – demanded high standards for databases

Ars Electronica holds one of the world’s largest archives of digital media art spanning the last 39 years. Heart of the Archive is a self-built database, with currently already more than 143.000 entries with a storage volume of approximately 61 terabytes and over 4,5 million linked files. Its holdings include a highly diverse array of art works and documentation of projects, exhibitions and activities.

Since the beginning, the aspiration was to have a living archive with the content researched, used, exhibited and remembered. Today’s goal is still to make as much as possible accessible online for research, to talk about it, to present it, and to encourage artists to work with it.

The demanded high standards for the database to achieve this, is to be flexible and adaptable enough to be able to deal with changing content, formats and requirements. As always, speed is an important factor. It should easily be possible to release, prepare and structure the content. Simultaneously, the database has to be safe, reliable and stable. For the Online part, aesthetic demands have to be considered, usability as well. On staff side – with growing content and the financial and personal resources getting less – it´s more important than ever to use synergies and to find economic workflows, because everything starts with structured and conscientious collecting and preserving.

The talk will give an insight into the structure of the intern database of the Ars Electronica Archive, its connection to the Online Archive, the search for synergies and economic workflows, the advantages it brings but also the difficulties it entails. Several examples of researched, used, exhibited and remembered contents will be outlined and the latest aspirations of Ars Electronica regarding Media Art and the Art Market will be pointed out.