“Connecting new media art archives worldwide” presented by , Searleman, van der Plas and Wong

Online new media art archives exist throughout the world as repositories documenting theory and practice of electronic art. For a researcher, instructor, or student using these resources for scholarly work or inspiration, the process often involves visiting multiple websites with different interfaces and information. Without knowledge of the wide variety of archives that catalog new media art, the sought-after material may be missed. In 2018, the seeds of an initiative were sown at a roundtable discussion at ISEA2018 (South Africa) and during ISEA2019 (South Korea), the real work began to investigate and initiate the process of connecting new media art archives from around the world. Beginning with a core group including representatives from the ISEA, SIGGRAPH, FILE, Ars Electronica, and the Archive of Digital Art (ADA) archives, group discussions, implementation meetings, summits (Summit on New Media Archiving @ ISEA2020, mini-conferences (FILEALIVE 2020) and presentations at various conferences occurred. This paper outlines the details of the project along with the implementation procedures and challenges.