INNOVATIVE TOOLS FOR MEDIA ART RESEARCH New Project Funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Innovative tools for the image sciences are being developed by “Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research (AT.MAR),” a project led by Professor Oliver GRAU, Chair of Image Sciences. It is the first large FWF project of this category at the Danube University. A “Thesaurus Bridge” will be developed, which will enable comparative study of image phenomena from the Renaissance to the present day. Media Art is growing in importance in our society. This is undoubtedly due to its potential for illuminating complex relationships of our time, such as globalisation, the image and media revolution, the influence of new technologies on our society’s view of human beings, or environmental crises, in a unique way. This is clearly evidenced by the growing number of biennials, festivals, and conferences devoted to or featuring Media Art. Frequently, however, digital artworks cannot be exhibited after a few years due to changing hard and software; this means that these artworks may be lost forever to our digitally based societies. In order to contextualise and integrate such works in our cultural and scientific institutions they need to be studied in depth, but this is currently not being done. Goal of the FWF project, which commences in February 2013 at the Department of Image Sciences, is to develop an interactive and globally networked online tool to support theoretical analysis of the image revolution that is underway and to improve the precarious situation of Media Art Research. The project will develop an entirely new kind of thesaurus, which will function as a bridge between Media Art and historical image genres, from the Renaissance to contemporary art. By linking the DATABASE OF VIRTUAL ART (DVA) with the GRAPHISCHE SAMMLUNG GÖTTWEIG (GSSG) using this meta-thesaurus it will be possible to analyse systematically the afterlife of art historical themes in contemporary Media Art. Further, it will be possible to identify not only developments, but also discontinuities. As pioneer in the field, the collective Database of Virtual Art (DVA) has been documenting rapidly evolving digital installation art since 1999. Artists, and at this point an additional 280 theorists and mediaarthistorians, are members of the collective DVA-Archive. The DVA is based on the “concept of expanded documentation.” Currently it contains thousands of work descriptions and digital documents, videos, technical data, institutions and bio-bibliographical information. As one of the richest resources online the scientific project was from it’s beginning a university based endeavour. Only artists with at least 5 exhibitions and/or articles on their oeuvre are represented in the archive. Beside that, recommendations are made by the advisory board: Roy ASCOTT, Beryl, GRAHAM, Erkki HUHTAMO, Jorge LA FERLA, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL and Martin ROTH. Research assistants on the project are Christian BERNDT, PhD and Valerie KUMMER, MA. Further posts will be opened shortly. The project is funded until 2016. In advance of the project a declaration was adopted in Liverpool, which in the meantime has been signed by over 400 international scholars, academics, gallery and museum people, and artists. http://www.mediaarthistory.org/decalaration