Art, Life, and Technology, Through Time and Space

2019

The distinguishing characteristic of digitalism is its focus on human behavior in cultural and social contexts. When we think of the developments of computer science and “information theory” that spawned the digital revolution, the focus generally defaults to digital tools and technology, as opposed to its effects on human life and culture and how advances in computing, digital communications and technology are transforming our ways of doing, seeing, knowing, learning, living and loving, to name a few examples. The impact of digitalism is all encompassing, touching all disciplines and human pursuits. How will museums change and transform themselves to connect in authentic ways with their communities while remaining relevant in a world transformed by digital culture that is moving full speed ahead, advancing in a state of constant change and development? While museums have been cautious and relatively slow to challenge traditional ways, they are surely noticing that we are reaching a...

2007

This half-day Symposium explores themes of digital art, culture, and heritage, bringing together speakers from a range of disciplines to consider technology with respect to artistic and academic practice. As we increasingly see ourselves and life through a digital lens and the world communicated on digital screens, we experience altered states of being and consciousness in ways that blur the lines between digital and physical reality, while our ways of thinking and seeing become a digital stream of consciousness that flows between place and cyberspace. We have entered the postdigital world and are living, working, and thinking with machines as our computational culture driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning embeds itself in everyday life and threads across art, culture, and heritage, juxtaposing them in the digital profusion of human creativity on the Internet.

2005

First Published in the UK in 2005 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK First Published in the USA in 2005 by Intellect Books, ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave. Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA Copyright© 2005 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No ...

History Compass, 2021

The past decade has seen tremendous growth and innova- tion in the use of digital resources, methods, and tools in the history of art and architecture. While digital art history is less developed than text-based disciplines, the emergence of new digital standards for visual and spatial data, and ad- vances in computer vision are poised to revolutionize the field. This article provides a survey of recent developments in digital art history from the perspective of European and North American publications and conferences. I discuss the digitization of visual, spatial, and textual resources by muse- ums, research centers, and individual researchers. Research- ers have developed a variety of tools for digitally analyzing art and architecture, which can replicate or challenge tra- ditional methods of formal, iconographic, and socio-histor- ical analysis. Trends in published research indicate uneven growth in the theoretical sophistication of digital art history scholarship. While digital methods are quickly moving into the training of art history professionals and students, digi- tal art history communities in museums, research institutes, and universities remain somewhat fragmented. I conclude with a reflection on critiques of digital art history, several of which have not been fully addressed in recent scholarship.

Over the last thirty years Media Art has evolved into a vivid contemporary factor, Digital Art became "the art of our time" but has still not "arrived" in the core cultural institutions of our societies. Although there are well attended festivals worldwide, well funded collaborative projects, numerous artist written articles, discussion forums and emerging database documentation projects, media art is still rarely collected by museums, not included or supported within the mainframe of art history and nearly inaccessible for the non north-western public and their scholars. Thus, we witness the erasure of a significant portion of the cultural memory of our recent history. It is no exaggeration to say we face a total loss of digital contemporary art, and works originating approximately 10 years ago can most likely not be shown anymore. The primary question is: what can we learn from other fields to develop a strategy to solve the problems of Media Art and its research, to answer the challenges Image Science is facing today in the framework of the Digital Humanities? This question opens up a perspective to overcome the typical placement of Media Arts in an academic ghetto. The development of the field is supported in an increasingly enduring manner by new scientific instruments like online image and text archives, which attempt to document collectively the art and theory production of the last decades. By discussing examples from a variety of projects from the natural sciences and the humanities, this article tries to demonstrate the strategic importance of these collective projects, especially in their growing importance for the Humanities.

2020

The multifaceted history of digital art has also entailed an evolution of understanding the complex relationships between the material and immaterial in the digital medium. This text traces the histories of digital objects and systems from the 1960s to the so-called 'post-digital' era, which finds its artistic expression in works shaped by digital technologies and networks, yet taking the material form of objects such as paintings, sculptures, or photographs. The term neomateriality is used here to capture an objecthood that reflects back the data of humans and the environment, or reveals the way in which digital processes perceive and shape our world. Digital materialities are considered in relation to network cultures and politics, as well as art institutions.

Through a combination of interviews and research center site visits, the following topics were explored: • The role of art history research centers in supporting digital art history • Challenges in art history teaching, research, and scholarship in the digital realm • Access to digital tools, services, and resources needed by the discipline • Digital pedagogy in art history • The role of digital publishing in the discipline • Current and potential partnerships • Sources of innovation in the field • The role of funding agencies in supporting digital art history.

Digital approaches occupy an increasingly important place in the discipline of art history today. Yet their potential remains largely untapped by many in the field. What becomes possible in terms of substantive change in art historical research and understanding? How do these tools change not only the outcomes of our research (i.e., generating new insight or perspectives) but how we think about the material we work upon? What new opportunities for engagement with cultural heritage are made possible by the digital, both within and beyond the museum? How might the digital impact pedagogy, and what careers in the arts should we be preparing our students for? Do these new methods mean leaving behind the approaches of the past, or is there room for both the digital and the analog in art history? Recasting the Question: Digital Approaches in Art History and Museums is a day-long symposium exploring the application of digitally-based methods to the study and presentation of art and architecture in universities and museums. Bringing together international experts in digital art history and exhibition with leaders in the field in Australia, Recasting the Question offers the opportunity to explore the critical and scholarly issues that animate this emerging discipline through a series of projects focused on art and architecture from Australia and around the world. Speakers will use current research projects as jump off points for thinking through the ideas and issues that stand behind their projects and how those ideas have evolved from (or relate to) the field as it has conventionally been known and practiced.