Adobe recently announced the Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM): a digital museum created to document and preserve great works of digital art and innovation. The museum will be a large online interactive experience and opens on August 2nd of this year. While few details are available right now, the Museum homepage offers a small glimpse into what this site will eventually become.

UPDATE: more information is available on Adobe's official page announcing the AMDM. I have updated the post throughout.

The AMDM homepage currently features a short video describing what the museum is and how it will function. The Museum's mission is described in the "About the Museum" link on the homepage:

"About the Museum: Our mission is to showcase and preserve groundbreaking digital work and expert commentary to illustrate how digital media shapes and impacts today's society. Here, artists and innovators have a unique freedom to create work that wouldn't be possible in a traditional museum.

Unlike traditional museums, AMDM is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and is accessible everywhere. In the coming months, exhibits will feature video artist Tony Oursler, RISD Preside John Maeda and Japanese artist Mariko Mori."

The AMDM is a virtual 3D building that users will "explore" exhibits, almost assuredly through the Flash player in the browser. The AMDM will somehow virtually contain exhibits that describe and display important works of digital art and innovation. The building was designed by acclaimed Italian architect Filippo Innocenti, who Adobe describes as a "mast of fluid urban designs for large, public installations" on the announcement page. The "building contractor" was Piero Frescobaldi, who consulted on the design and "construction" of the virtual space.

Early rendering of the museum building's texture.

Early rendering of the museum's shape.

Later rendering of the museum in a virtual city.

Users will participate through a "virtual viewing device" that represents their eyes and ears and looks like something of a jelly-fish in a bubble.

Conceptual rendering of the virtual viewing device.

"Final" rendering of the virtual viewing device as seen on the AMDM homepage.

Senior VP of Global Marketing Ann Lewness concludes the video with this statement: "We encourage you to roam the halls and explore the exhibits. There are no guards here and we're always open."

Rich Silverstein, a founding partner of San Fracisco's extremely influential and prestigious Goodby, Silverstein and Partners advertising agency, is the Museum Director and presumably his agency is responsible for its building (several other Goodby, Silverstien and Partners agents appear throughout the film including Mandy and Aaron Dietz.)

This is a great move on Adobe's part as the museum will serve as first a "hall of fame" for those involved in making content on the Adobe platform and help to promote the wide variety of innovative and artistic creations done using Adobe technology. Secondly. though I hesitate to say it, I can't help but see this as an answer to the growing concern among web developers that Flash content may be in danger due to HTML5. Whether or not it was intentional, the Museum looks a lot like Adobe's response to Apple's HTML5 gallery.

If this is indeed a response, Adobe's tone and technique are excellent. The "museum" approach highlights the complementary nature of Adobe's tools, devices and ideals, and reinforces the idea that the company is dedicated to supporting the production of digital experiences rather than any one particular implementation. It takes the discussion away from a debate between technologies and focuses on the end product and the user. Since all of this technology is supposed to enable better and more inspirational user experiences, Adobe is right to highlight these things and very correctly and maturely staying out of the less productive technology debate.

It is of vital importance that Adobe and its partners nail the execution of this museum. Hopefully they will also account for making the museum experience enjoyable on multiple devices through Flash Player 10.1, as multiple-device interaction is one of Adobe's key value propositions and one of the key battlefields where the HTML vs. Flash debate is frequently waged. If the current website is anything to judge by things are going well - the experience is smooth and slick, with well rendered animations of the fish-eye viewer running without slower my browser one bit.

For those of us in the RIA development field, HTML and Flash are tools many of us use and enjoy. Hopefully the museum will help to sell the confluence of these technologies by focusing on other digital revolutions that Adobe has helped inspire, including the art provided by PhotoShop, layout innovations brought by In Design, and maybe even less tangible ideas like the JIT technology used in Webkit and the SVG standard used in JavaScript vector graphics.

As an RIA itself, I'm also hopeful that the AMDM will contain an RIA hall featuring the innovative work that all of us have done on the web. I'd love to see something that pays homage to early attempts at AJAX, the first Flash frameworks, and early RIA's built with Flex (along with the best of the mature ones too of course.)

If you haven't yet, head to the AMDM stie and sign up for a "membership" to receive future updates via email.

Read more from RJ Owen.