Abstract

Third Summit on New Media Art Archiving

Keywords: Artist as Archivist, Linked Open Data, Big Data, Graph Database, Backend for Media Art, Self-documentation, Community-driven Archiving, Distributed Knowledge Making

Traditionally, domain datasets such as media art exhibition records and collection records are managed and published by archiving or research institutes. However, it is rare for an institute to compile or possess an entire exhibition history of an artist before his archive enters its custody. This paper provides an alternative paradigm in which artists may self-document and publish their creative history using the easy-to-use Linked Open Data suite Wikibase. This paper also argues that self-documentation is a two-for-one endeavour where artists can consolidate their CVs while the archiving and research communities will have access to a distributed archive.

• Raphael Tsz Kin Chau is a PhD student in Digital Humanities from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Chau is interested in the exhibition, experience and retrieval of Big Cultural data. Chau obtained his master’s degree in Digital Humanities from KU Leuven, Belgium. His master’s thesis reflected on the data publication strategies of memory institutions in the context of the Europeana aggregator project. He has developed the physical archive and the digital infrastructure of the Jeffrey Shaw Archive and Jeffrey Shaw Compendium which is exhibited in Austria, France, Hong Kong and Switzerland. Chau is currently working on the Digital Murten Panorama project (DIAGRAM) collaborated with Stiftung für das Panorama der Schlacht bei Murten.