The weirdest event I saw at Transmediale was a meeting to discuss adding the term “media art” to wikipedia. The discussion was moderated by the director of the festival, according to whom the wikipedians that were supposed to hold the thing had cancelled about an hour before the discussion was scheduled (?!).

Discuss adding a new term to wikipedia?? Yes you heard right! I was almost waiting for them to start creating a comity. Maybe multiple comities for the different fields of media art.

Why do I have a feeling, that the very desire to define that term can only come from people who are likely to organize a (pseudo academic) discussion about what they should add to the ongoing discussion called wikipedia?

I must say that media art does not seem like a very useful term to me at all: It distinguishes where I would prefer not to and it does not distinguish where I feel distinguishing could enhance the understanding of different artistic positions and strategies. I must also say that for me the term “art” always felt like it was a bit to small. What a nightmare it must be for artists to find themselves being called media artists on wikipedia.