NETZSPANNUNG.ORG

AN INTERNET PLATFORM FOR MEDIA - CULTURAL EDUCATION

The second phase of the project: October 2002 to September 2004

Since late 2002 the focus of netzspannung.org´s work has been on developing the platform as an educational and training instrument for media artists, art teachers and art scientists, with which they can acquire specialist knowledge and skills.
With this in mind, the netzspannung.org team has been cooperating with cultural and educational institutions to create new content: the Internet platform now offers an extensive archive of scientific lectures on topical themes from media art, theory and research, which can be downloaded as documentary videos. The student media projects submitted between 2001 and 2003 in the "digital sparks" competitions provide a varied insight into teaching at German-speaking universities and colleges. The new field "Media Art Learning" presents best-practice examples that vividly illustrate how media-artistic approaches might be taught or implemented in schools and institutions of higher education.
[link 01] Lectures
[link 02] digital sparks
[link 03] Media Art Learning

An important function of netzspannung.org lies in interrelating content from the fields of media art and design, research and teaching. The question of designing interfaces, for example, is worked on just as intensively by IT researchers as it is by designers, artists and theoreticians. Nevertheless, a knowledge of the work of other disciplines cannot always be taken for granted. In addition to interdisciplinary events organised under the auspices of netzspannung.org, such as the symposium entitled "Online Archives - Perspectives of Networked Knowledge Spaces", certain themes in the domain "Media Art Research" are treated in a transdisciplinary manner.
[link 04] Online archives - perspectives of networked knowledge spaces
[link 05] Media art research

netzspannung.org has also investigated new ways with its Knowledge Discovery Tools, in order to contextualise heterogeneous content. Semantic Map and Timeline, two tools developed as prototypes in the first phase of the project, were improved in the second phase through expanding their functionality. They are now available as Java clients and can be applied to different data pools - even other platforms. They disclose thematic or temporal connections between contents that cannot be revealed with conventional forms of presentation, for example lists.
[link 06] Knowledge Discovery Tools

The wealth of content that has gradually been generated on the platform in three years of online operation has pushed the original design concept to its limits. So the team has developed a new information architecture and design, allowing users to more easily view and access the platform´s rich diversity of content.
Also on the technical front, the Internet platform has been improved in terms of personalisation and web services. Personalisation is a prerequisite if it is to be possible in future to set up personalised learning offerings on the platform. This technology enables content at netzspannung.org to be presented specially tailored to the particular user accessing the platform. Web services, by contrast, support communication between netzspannung.org and other Internet offerings. They are required if, for example, content from other online archives is to be integrated into the interfaces and services of netzspannung.org. Conversely, with the aid of the web services, partners can also use the knowledge discovery tools developed during the project to visualise their own content.
[link 07] Platform technology