Media art is a relatively new art form, and the constantly expanding field introduces new technologies and hybrid genres. As a consequence, the terminology of the field is scarce, unstable and largely unstructured. This is a challenge for art museums and other organisations engaged in cataloguing and presenting media art.
OMA, Ontology for Media Art has been published in June 2022 at the Finto.fi vocabulary service maintained by the National Library of Finland. With over 1500 concepts to describe the wide field of media arts, ranging from video, sound, light art, experimental film and music to new forms of digital literature and AI based art, OMA is one of the most comprehensive terminology resources dedicated to media art. Concepts from the tri-lingual (fi,sv,en) ontology have also been added and linked to Wikidata.
Media Culture Association M-cult with the information specialist Mira Rissanen and the executive director Minna Tarkka were responsible for realizing the OMA – Ontology for Media Art. In the wikidata migration they were consulted by the open data specialist Susanna Ånäs, and in the ontology publishing their main partner was the National Library’s Finto.fi service. The OMA ontology was produced in the MEHI – Media Art History in Finland project, financed by AVEK, Kone Foundation, The Ministry of Education and Culture, Oskar Öflund Foundation, The Finnish Cultural Foundation and The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.
The MEHI – Media Art History in Finland project 2021–2023, led by The Finnish Media Art Network, was realized in a consortium with AV-arkki, the Centre for Finnish Media Art, M-cult, Artists’ Association MUU, Poike Productio, SOLU / Bioart Society and FLASH – the Finnish Light Art Society.
