Netzspannung.org of the Fraunhofer IAIS

Netzspannung.org has been online since 2001, and defines itself as a tool for researching, reflecting upon, and imparting electronic culture. The educational platform for the theory and practice of media art offers over 2,500 work descriptions, texts, images and videos for the purpose of interdisciplinary education in art, design and informatics. Every month, between 100,000 and 150,000 international visitors take advantage of the cost-free access to over 200 hours of tele-lectures and experimental teaching and learning modules for schools and universities.

Focal area and projects 

The focus of netzspannung.org lies on interactive media art in the context of interdisciplinary artistic research, archiving and publication. Navigation through data space is supported by semantic maps, while the Media Flow tool orchestrates the database as a stream of images and terms: The archive talks back. Important projects and events have included CAST01-Living in Mixed Realities, Netzspannung.org – Performing the Archive, eCulture Trends and Digital Sparks.

Funding and awards

Under the leadership of the media artists Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, netzspannung.org was developed at Fraunhofer MARS Exploratory Media Lab and received funding from BMBF German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The netzspannung.org team has received a number of awards, among them IF Communication Design Award (2007) and Medidaprix Audience Award (2005). As of 2010, the action radius of the media-art archive is set to widen in the course of cooperation agreements with ZKM | Center for Art and Media

in Karlsruhe and the University of Siegen.