Digital Art Museum aims to become the world's leading online resource for the history and practice of digital fine art.

It exhibits the work of leading Artists in this field since 1956. [DAM] is an on-line museum with a comprehensive exhibition of Digital Art supported by a wide range of background information including biographies, articles, a bibliography and interviews.

[DAM] also includes an Essays section with articles by artists and theorists specially selected to place the works in context (many of them by special arrangement with Leonardo journal). A History section lists key events and technologies in date order.

[DAM] is intended for the enjoyment of all visitors, curators and collectors, scholars of art, and for an emerging generation of digital artists wishing to understand a 50-year heritage of innovation and experimentation.

Phase 1: 1956 - 1986 The Pioneers
This includes the pioneers of digital art, some of whom were not primarily artists, but whose visual explorations were crucial to the emerging medium. The writing of computer programmes was central to most of the work during this period.

Phase 2: 1986 - 1996 The Paintbox Era
In this period art software became available (slowly at first), attracting artists who could create works without programming. The principle software to emerge during this period was the paint programme, underpinned by affordable computers and devices such as the scanner and film recorder.

Phase 3: 1996 - 2006 The Multimedia Era
With the growing availability of technologies of interactivity and Internet access, we see both a democratisation of the medium and new interactive and online artforms.

This stage of the development of [DAM], supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Board of Great Britain (AHRB), has focussed on the Pioneers of Phase I, in order to create the historical underpinning of the discipline.