The Archive of Digital Art (ADA, digitalartarchive.at) is one of the most important and comprehensive online archives on media art. It was founded in 1998 by Dr. habil. Oliver Grau in Berlin and has been housed at the University for Continuing Education Krems since 2006. To this day, ADA archives information on topics and technologies as well as aesthetic aspects and contexts related to contemporary media art, placing an emphasis on enhanced documentation.

Decentralised collaborative archive

ADA's mission is to be a “living archive”, i.e. an archive that is constantly expanding in decentralised and collaborative ways. Registered members from all over the world can independently manage their profiles. In the past and current research projects, ADA has been and continues to provide progressive research tools for artists, scholars, students, and interested members of the public. The keyword system developed in ADA specifically for media art allows connections with other databases to be formed as well. In the current research projects LeFo and ImDaLi, the existing research tools will be expanded and supplemented. In addition, the existing data sets are used as a starting point for conducting complex visual and semantic analyses as well as data visualisations.

In 2022, the archive contained, among other things, 650 artist profiles, 3,000 artwork entries, 4,000 literature entries, and a total of 10,500 documents that can be examined and studied. The ADA team at the University of Continuing Education Krems supervises the research work and the technical development of the archive website, performs editorial work, and offers their assistance to ADA users.