Model-Database-Interface: A study of the redesign of the ArtBase, and the role of user agency in born-digital archives

本文批判性地考察了研究者与数字艺术组织Rhizome合作重新设计ArtBase网络艺术档案的嵌入式实践。网络艺术挑战了艺术作品作为单一、独立对象的观念。要表演和体验，网络艺术取决于硬件和软件环境、网络协议以及用户交互之间的一致性。因此，网络艺术档案作为用户（包括员工、艺术家、程序员、学者）和数字基础设施之间的关系网络运作。这种网络化的条件使重新设计档案馆的界面变得复杂，但也为重新思考用户在不透明的数字机构环境中的代理提供了机会。为了探索和扩展知情用户交互和干预的潜力，本研究开发了一个原始的数字档案设计框架：模型-数据库-接口（MDI）。MDI跟踪并显示数据模型、数据库软件和用户界面之间的联系，反映机构和基于社区的分类、使用和维护过程。本文演示了MDI如何应用设计原型、数据可视化和用户研讨会来打开底层数据结构和过程，以进行检查和干预。此外，它还讨论了ArtBase重新设计如何采用链接开放数据（LOD）模型来支持正在进行的用户参与和协作。因此，MDI被定位为一个概念和方法框架，它以用户参与和关键意义的创造为中心，超越了重新设计的完成。MDI的发展及其在LOD环境中的应用为界面设计理论和实践做出了独特的贡献。该研究还通过重新构想ArtBase界面作为基础设施反转和用户协作的站点，为数字存档领域做出了贡献。超越网络艺术的特殊情况，本文中讨论的策略适用于各种重视用户代理角色的数字界面环境

This thesis critically examines the researcher's embedded practice of redesigning the ArtBase archive of net art in collaboration with digital arts organization Rhizome. Net art challenges the notion of artworks as single, self-contained objects. To be performed and experienced, net art depends upon alignments between hardware and software environments, network protocols, as well as user interactions. Therefore, the archive of net art operates as a network of relations between users-including staff, artists, programmers, academics-and digital infrastructure. This networked condition complicates a redesign of the archive's interface, but also opens opportunities to rethink the agency of users within opaque, digital institutional environments. To explore and expand the potential for informed user interaction and intervention, this research develops an original framework for the design of born-digital archives: Model-Database-Interface (MDI). MDI traces and makes visible the links between data model, database software, and user interface, reflecting processes of institutional and community-based classification, use, and maintenance. This thesis demonstrates how MDI applies design prototypes, data visualizations, and user workshops to open up underlying data structures and processes to inspection and intervention. Further, it discusses how the ArtBase redesign adopts a linked open data (LOD) model to support ongoing user engagement and collaboration. Thereby MDI is positioned as a conceptual and methodological framework that centers user participation and critical meaning-making beyond the redesign's completion. The development of MDI as well as its application in LOD environments, make distinctive contributions to interface design theory and practice. This study also contributes to the field of digital archiving by reimagining the ArtBase interface as a site for infrastructural inversion and user collaboration. Reaching beyond the particular case of net art, the strategies discussed in this thesis are applicable to a variety of digital interface contexts that place value on the role of user agency