10. From Data to Display

This research note discusses the ongoing development of an open art research database within the project Sharing Knowledge in the Arts SKitA (2023–27), focusing on ontology design and data visualisation as critical components of digital knowledge infrastructures. Using archival materials from 1990s net critical and cyberfeminist initiatives—particularly the Basel-based platform “THEswissTHING”—the project revisits early experimental practices of digital openness and collective media infrastructures. Drawing on feminist approaches, we engage in a concrete infrastructuring process that redefines openness as an ethical, situated, and relational practice. A semantic database, built in Wikibase and structured through a custom ontology, was developed from the outset based on these expanded notions of openness. This ontology serves as the foundation for an evolving data visualisation that aims to translate contextual complexity, multiplicity, and epistemic positionality into interactive forms of access and engagement.Adopting data feminist perspectives, we critically interrogate dominant models of visual representation and foreground alternative strategies that emphasise ambiguity, participation, and care. We discuss how these perspectives inform both our critique of standardised data practices and the conceptual design of our own visualisation. While these considerations have already been implemented in the development of the project’s ontology, they are now being carried forward into the ongoing creation of the visual interface—transforming the database from a static repository into a speculative, collective visual site of knowledge production in digital art and digital humanitities research.