History

A number of forerunners belonging to these educational institutions had already come together in Virtueel Platform, expertise centre for e-culture, back in the mid-1990s.  The aim was to support the strength of the individual parts – using e-culture – to represent this emerging sector in the Netherlands and abroad among the political and business sectors, social organisations and educational institutions. An important condition to be able to function as a sector institute was that this should be specified and the position clarified in relationship to society and other fields of art. A dynamic and change-oriented sector is of course more difficult to define. Yet this challenge was taken up with enthusiasm using the innovative resources associated with this sector. At present the network is being mapped out using Issue Crawler, a software tool that searches for and visualises Internet networks. 2009 saw the publication of Mapping E-culture. Authors answer the question ‘What is e-culture?’ from different perspectives. Presented together in this form a picture is given of the nature and variety of e-culture and of the involvement of a wide range of other sectors.