OMA – Ontology for Media Art

OMA, Ontology for Media Art has been published

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

OMA, Ontology for Media Art has been published 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.

The ontology was created at M-cult by informatician Mira Rissanen and director Minna Tarkka with Wikidata support by Susanna Ånäs in context of the Media Art History in Finland (MEHI) project coordinated by the Finnish Media Art Network.

The work was made possible by grants from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture – AVEK, Kone Foundation and the Ministry of Education and Culture.