Panel Statement

The ISEA symposia are held all over the world and organised by a different group of people each time. This means central archiving of the produced materials, like papers and art work documentation, needs a separate effort. In 2006, the Dutch Mondriaan Foundation subsidised the set up of an online archive, supplemented by support from the VSB fund (NL) and later the Bowling Green State University (USA). The ISEA Online Symposium Archives are now up-to-date (1988-2017) and can be found at isea-archives.org. Additional work, like adding photos and videos, is being undertaken, and a new website, with much improved usability, is in preparation.
The main archivists, Bonnie Mitchell and Wim van der Plas, are now aiming at connecting all relevant (new media, electronic art, etc.) archives with each other, for two reasons:
1: to connect to each other on-line, and investigate the possibly of a common platform, that searches all connected archives
2: to learn from each other and to avoid  duplicate efforts

We invite anybody interested to join us at this roundtable for an exchange of thoughts and to assist us all in making progress.

• Bonnie Mitchell is full professor at Bowling Green University and was a board member of ISEA International from 2012-2017.
• Wim van der Plas is co-founder of ISEA and was executive director or board member of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, subsequently ISEA International, from 1990-2017.