The Digital Archive Experience

This article, as well as the book, investigates the ways in which new digital media may enhance the experience of the art-archive. Taken as a whole, the new media is a vital component of a 'transdisciplinary' and transformative field, a cultural landscape that is changing rapidly the conditions and domains of the archive and the (art)museum. How, then, should the functions and strengths of both archive and museum be shaped to meet those cultural and technological changes? When the Internet and world wide web became 'the place to be' commercially, museums followed suit and established their own sites. These can be coarsely divided into two categories: purely utilitarian websites with information about admission, hours of operation, directions, and the current show. The other - more ambitious - type of website tried to expand the exhibition area of the museum into virtual reality. The idea sounds great on paper but seldom succeeds in reality. Such websites often ignore the physical and social experience of a museum visit. Curiously, when they are most successful, websites often compete with the actual museum, possibly reducing the number of visitors and diluting the effect of seeing art first hand. The book discusses the challenges of the archive and the (art)museum in the age of digital media. It is based upon documentation from a research project, MAP - Media Art Platform, that drew upon the talents and collaboration of many institutions, artists, programmers, art historians, designers and others. The outcome of the project was presented at the exhibition TOTAL_ACTION - Art in the New Media Landscape at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark, from October through November 2008.