GAMA PROJECT



GAMA: Collections of European media art

GAMA, the "Gateway to Archives of Media Art" provides access to a wealth of information about the works of both well-known and emerging media artists from European collections of media art. The media art content initially comes from eight European media art archives and can be searched and browsed on this navigation platform. The portal networks different databases housing textual and visual information on more than 10,000 works.


The project

The interdisciplinary project "GAMA - Gateway to Archives of Media Art" was launched on 2007-11-01 by 19 participating organisations from Europe's culture, art and technology sector, with the aim of establishing a central online portal to different European media art collections for the interested public, for curators, artists, academics, researchers, and mediators - an endeavour supported by the European Commission within the framework of the econtentplus programme with 1.2 million Euro


Media art

Artworks created with new media technology constitute one of the most popular contemporary art genres: media art. Its appeal for the general public derives from the importance that new technologies such as the Internet, digital equipment etc. play in everyday life. Media art explores the changing relationship between culture and technology, and questions in experimental, innovative and often audacious ways the ambiguous role of new media technologies in our lives, while paying homage to the technology at the same time. In the face of this, media art archives have an invaluable mission amongst modern art collections. Yet, if the existing digital media art libraries are accessible only with difficulty for cultural or scholarly stakeholders, how much more so must they be for the interested general public? Use and re-use of the archives' digital content are totally disproportionate to the importance of media art in contemporary culture. GAMA is a project to correct this incongruity.


The Gateway

The aim is the establishment of a central platform to enable multilingual, facilitated and user-orientated access to a significant number of media art archives and their digitalised contents. The consortium comprises of a majority of the most important digital content holders for media art in Europe. The content provided constitutes approx. 55% of all media artworks presented online by European cultural archives and distributors. This amount will ensure a significant increase in use, re-use and cross-border visibility of the digital content when aggregated and accessible through one common interface. The gateway will quickly develop to be the European central online interface and search portal for any person interested in media art. The enhanced access will also encourage other archives to place their content online. The future perspective is to expand the network so as to represent all European online archives of media art.


Experimental film & video art, performances & installations

art projects presented include previews of experimental film and video art, performances and installations; they are documented and further contextualized with texts, lectures and events. Users will, for example, find details on early works from Hungarian net artists, video artworks from Slovenia, media art from the Netherlands, France and many other countries from inside and outside Europe, as well as documentaries from the Ars Electronica festivals or experimental films from Sweden.


Partners van Gama


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