While Media Art has evolved into a critical field at the intersection of art, science and technology, a significant loss threatens this art form due to rapid technological obsolescence and static documentation strategies. Addressing these challenges, the Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research was developed to advance an Archive of Digital Art. Through an innovative strategy of “collaborative archiving,” social Web 2.0 features foster the engagement of the international media art community and a “bridging thesaurus” linking the extended documentation of the Archive with other databases of “traditional” art history facilitates interdisciplinary and transhistorical comparative analyses.

Virtual reality (VR) is a constant phenomenon in art history that can be traced back to antiquity. It can involve an area of ritual action, a private, artificial paradise, or a public sphere with politically suggestive power—in short, it encompasses a visual history that is characterized by totality. The concept of transposing viewers into an enclosed, illusionary visual space has been revived and expanded in the VR art of the current age. The more intimate ly an interface nestles into viewers' senses, the more intense their immersion will be. Such an interface weakens the viewers' sense of psychological distance and puts the relationship between art and consciousness into question.