How LI-MA Helped Develop the Norwegian Video Art Archive

To set up their video archive, PNEK asked LI-MA for advice on best practices regarding media art archiving, digitisation and preservation. This resulted in a three-year pilot, which focused on digitising a specialised part of the archive while creating a new user interface for the Resource Space database. One of the main challenges facing this project was to create an API and a user interface. Luckily, LI-MA has extensive experience in consultancy and development of databases, as well as user interfaces for media art collections. This dates back to our origins as the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk), which was an international forerunner in archiving (online), distributing and preserving media art.

For the development of the software structure, we worked closely with our partner Jaap van der Kreeft (Toxus), combining his technical development, implementation, and testing skills with the knowledge and experience of LI-MA. We realised our goal of creating a more intuitive interface that was easy to use, accessible to all age groups and open source. However, in the years following this project’s nominal completion, and due to lack of funding, the video archive and its care were transferred from PNEK to the Nasjonalmuseet. In 2018, support for PNEK was withdrawn, and it was formally dissolved in 2021. 

The Norwegian Video Art Archive at the Nasjonalmuseet

The technical infrastructure that LI-MA developed together with Toxus lives on at the Nasjonalmuseet, where artists can add, edit and download files directly from the system. Access remains free of charge to the public but it does require registration.

To learn more, click on the corresponding tiles below or contact us using the form below.

Thumbnail image: Morten Børresen, The Man on the Screen, 1982 (Nasjonalmuseet/Nasjonalmuseet Robert Meyer Collection/© Børresen, Morten/BONO)  Header image: Sander Breure & Witte van Hulzen, The Shores of an Island I Only Skirted, 2012