“Indirect” and “In-Between” of Open Database Art

In the digital age, many artists use digital information mixed in various ways to create works of art. The subject of this paper’s discussion, i.e., open database art (ODA), is one such example. This form of art uses database techniques to retrieve and accumulate vast amounts of readily available and participant-contributed data from the internet, for the purpose of using the contents of the artwork. In other words, the work itself has no preset content, and all of the content relies on the import of external data. This paper seeks to hypothetically discuss the movement of data during its entry and the departure from an artwork, to provide a context and perspective for understanding ODA works. This paper also seeks to analyze ODAs through the conceptual notion of the “between”, to systematize and eke out the various directions that an ODA work may take, for the reference of future related studies.