Digital visual culture: theory and practice

130 Pages·2009·2.542 MB·English

by  Bentkowska-Kafel, Anna;Cashen, Trish;Gardiner, Hazel

B
E COmPUTERS AND THE HISTORY Of ART Volume 3
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Edited by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel,
Trish Cashen and Hazel Gardiner
ISBN 978-1-84150-248-9
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9 781841 502489
intellect | www.intellectbooks.com
Digital Visual Culture

Theory and Practice
Digital Visual Culture

Theory and Practice
Computers and the History of Art, Yearbook 2006, Volume 3
Edited by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish Cashen and Hazel Gardiner
The papers by Elizabeth Coulter-Smith and Graham Coulter-Smith, Dew Harrison, Ann-
Sophie Lehmann, Hamid van Koten and Ralf Nuhn were originally presented at the CHArt
21st annual conference, Theory and Practice, held at the British Academy, London, Thursday
10–Friday 11 November 2005 and are published online at www.chart.ac.uk/chart2005. The
papers by Karen Cham, Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Anne Laforet and Elaine Shemilt were
originally presented at the CHArt 22nd annual conference, Fast Forward. Art History, Curation
and Practice after Media, held at Birkbeck, University of London, Thursday 9–Friday 10
November 2006 and are published online at www.chart.ac.uk/chart2006.
The papers have been refereed by the CHArt Editorial Board and Jim Devine of the
Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, and Peter Main of the British Museum. CHArt
would like to thank all the reviewers for their help.
Disclaimer: The articles in this collection express the views of the authors and not necessarily
those of the CHArt Editorial Board. Articles © individual author(s) and reproduction is with
their permission. Illustrations © individual authors unless stated otherwise.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise,
without first seeking the written permission of the copyright owners and the publisher.
CHArt Committee:
Christopher Bailey, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, King’s College London, UK
Trish Cashen, The Open University, UK
Rupert Faulkner (Treasurer), Victoria and Albert Museum, UK
Francesca Franco (Student Member), Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Hazel Gardiner, King’s College London, UK
Charlie Gere (Chairman), Lancaster University, UK
Marlene Gordon, University of Michigan, USA
Neil Grindley, Joint Information Systems Committee, London, UK
Michael Hammel, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Colum Hourihane, Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, USA
Mike Pringle, Swindon Cultural Partnership, UK
Phillip Purdy, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, London, UK
Jemima Rellie, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, USA
Tanya Szrajber, British Museum, London, UK
Suzette Worden, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia
CHArt, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, 26–29 Drury
Lane, London WC2B 5RL. Tel: [phone], Fax: [phone],
www.chart.ac.uk, [email protected]
Digital Visual Culture
Theory and Practice
Computers and the History of Art Series
Edited by
Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish Cashen and Hazel Gardiner
(cid:94)(cid:99)(cid:105)(cid:90)(cid:97)(cid:97)(cid:90)(cid:88)(cid:105)(cid:1)(cid:55)(cid:103)(cid:94)(cid:104)(cid:105)(cid:100)(cid:97)(cid:33)(cid:21)(cid:74)(cid:64)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:1)(cid:56)(cid:93)(cid:94)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:92)(cid:100)(cid:33)(cid:21)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:54)
First published in the UK in 2009 by
Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2009 by
Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago,
IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2009 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Holly Rose
Copy Editor: Rhys Williams
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-248-9
EISBN 978-1-84150-299-1

Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
7 Contributors
11 Introduction
by Hazel Gardiner
DIGITAl CreATIvITy
15 Aesthetics and Interactive Art
by Karen Cham
23 A Blueprint of Bacterial life: Can a Science-art Fusion Move the Boundaries
of visual and Audio Interpretation?
by elaine Shemilt
33 I nvisible Work: The representation of Artistic Practice in Digital visual Culture
by Ann-Sophie lehmann
DIGITAl SPACeS
49 Mapping Outside the Frame: Interactive and locative Art environments
by elizabeth Coulter-Smith and Graham Coulter-Smith
67 From UNCAGeD to Cyber-Spatialism
by ralf Nuhn
DIGITAl PreSeNCe
79 When Presence-absence Becomes Pattern-randomness: Blast Theory’s Can
You See Me Now?
by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x]
89 The Digital Image and the Pleasure Principle: The Consumption of realism in
the Age of Simulation
by Hamid van Koten
DIGITAl ArCHIve
101 Digital Archiving as an Art Practice
by Dew Harrison
109 Preservation of Net Art in Museums
by Anne laforet
115 Abstracts
125 CHArt – Computers and the History of Art
127 Guidelines for Submitting Papers for the CHArt yearbook
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Contributors
Anna Bentkowska-Kafel is currently a research fellow for the 3D Visualisation in the
Arts Network, 3DVisA (http://3dvisa.cch.kcl.ac.uk), funded by the UK Joint Information
Systems Committee and hosted by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s
College London. She is also Associate Director of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture
in Britain and Ireland (www.crsbi.ac.uk) and is responsible for the creation and long-
term preservation of the project’s digital archive. Her research, teaching and publications
have been mainly on early modern visual culture in western Europe, with special
interest in cosmological and anthropomorphic representations of nature; as well as the
use of computer graphics in the study and interpretation of art. She holds an MA in the
History of Art (Warsaw), an MA in Computing Applications for the History of Art
(London) and a Ph.D. in Digital Media Studies (Southampton). She has been a member
of the CHArt committee since 1999.
Trish Cashen has been involved with integrating computing into university-level
humanities teaching since working with the UK Computers in Teaching Initiative in
the early 1990s. She works at The Open University, where her role involves exploiting a
range of new media for teaching arts subjects. Her main areas of interest lie in developing
blended learning environments to facilitate resource discovery, formative assessment
and communication. She is currently investigating the use of social networking tools
for learner support. She has been a member of the CHArt committee since 1994.
Karen Cham is an artist, lecturer and researcher. She is Principal Lecturer in Digital
Media and Development Director of the Digital Media Institute at Kingston University,
United Kingdom. She has been working with audio-visual technology since 1987
making performance, installation and screen-based works. She explores the poetic
potential of media technologies within a critical context. Current research interests
include digital semiotics, computational media aesthetics and design for interaction.
Maria Chatzichristodoulou, aka maria x, is a doctoral candidate at Goldsmiths,
University of London. She is based at Goldsmiths’ Digital Studios. Her background is
in theatre and digital media arts. She worked as a performer, curator and producer, and
has been the initiator and coordinator of interdisciplinary events and cultural activities
in Greece and the United Kingdom. She co-directed the Fournos Centre for Digital
Culture and Mediaterra Arts and Technologies Festival in Athens, 1996–2002 and has
collaborated with the French Centre International Creation Video et Multimedia (CICV,
2000–2003) as curator and researcher; and with the Machinista Festival in Glasgow,
2004. She has worked as Community Participation Officer for the Albany Centre in
London, 2003–2005, and has lectured at Goldsmiths College, Richmond American
University in London and Birkbeck, University of London.
Elizabeth Coulter-Smith (www.coultersmith.com) is a new media artist and lecturer and
has worked in the visual arts in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
She is Head of Fine Art at Staffordshire University. Prior to this appointment she was
a Senior Lecturer in New Media at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD)
2003–2006. From 2001–2003 she worked at the University of Southampton, School of
Computer Science and Electronics. She is currently working on a site specific ‘locative’
commission. Her work can be found in corporate, public and private collections in
Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Graham Coulter-Smith (www.coultersmith.com) is Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary
Art in the Faculty of Media, Art and Society at Southampton Solent University, and Senior
Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory at Staffordshire University. He is the author of
The Postmodern Art of Imants Tillers: Appropriation en abyme 1971–2001, Paul Holberton
Publishing, 2002; and Deconstructing Installation Art: Fine Art and Media Art, 1986–2006.
Madrid: Brumaria, 2009. He co-edited, with Maurice Owen, Art in the Age of Terrorism,
published for Southampton Solent University’s Centre for Advanced Scholarship in Art
and Design by Paul Holberton Publishing, 2005.
Hazel Gardiner is an editor for the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and
Ireland (www.crsbi.ac.uk) and coordinates the visual culture module of the MA in
Digital Humanities at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College
London. Prior to this she was Senior Project Officer for the ICT Methods Network,
funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, at the Centre for Computing
in the Humanities, King’s College London. She is a researcher for the CRSBI and also
for the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (www.cvma.ac.uk). She has been a member of
the CHArt committee since 1997.
Dew Harrison is a researcher and practitioner in digital and computer-mediated art
currently working as Reader in Digital Media Art at the University of Wolverhampton,
United Kingdom. Within her practice she undertakes a critical exploration of conceptual art,
the non-linear narrative and multimedia mind-mapping. She often works collaboratively
and considers curation a form of digital media art practice. She continues to show
internationally and has presented papers at diverse conferences spanning digital art,
consciousness studies, art history and museology. She also works as a co-director of PVA
MediaLab‚ LabCulture Ltd, a supportive agency working across UK and international
media centres to enable artists to engage with new media.
e
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acti Hamid van Koten is the programme leader for Contemporary Media Theory at the
d Pr School of Television and Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design
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a at the University of Dundee in Scotland. In this capacity he teaches students from the
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or departments of Animation, Illustration, Time-Based Art and Interactive Media Design.
e
h Born near Rotterdam, he came to Britain in 1977, initially to study Middle and Far-
T
e: Eastern philosophy. He graduated in 1993 from the Glasgow School of Art in product
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ult design. Before taking up a full-time lecturing post at Dundee University, he worked for
C
al ten years as a design consultant in diverse media.
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vi Anne Laforet is a doctoral candidate in the Culture and Communication Department
al at the University of Avignon, France. Her Ph.D. thesis is entitled Preservation of Net Art
git
Di in Museums; an Analysis of Moving Practices. Since 1998, her research has mainly been on
8 Internet art and the way museums approach, collect and preserve such artworks. In 2003
she participated in the Preservation of Electronic Records symposium in Ottawa and
the International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums (ICHIM)
in Paris. In 2004, she wrote a report on Net art preservation for the Délégation aux Arts
Plastiques of the French Ministry of Culture. In May 2005, Leonardo Electronic Almanac
published her article ‘Preservation of Net Art’. In parallel to her academic research, she
explores network-based art as a practitioner, event organiser and writer.
Ann-Sophie Lehmann is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Culture
Studies at the University of Utrecht. She read the History of Art in Vienna and Utrecht
where she obtained her Ph.D. She serves on the editorial boards of the Netherlandish
yearbook for the History of Art, NKJ and Kunstschrift. Her research is concerned with
the theory, history and practice of image-making in old and new media cultures. Her
recent projects include The Brush in the Computer, concerned with the history of early
computer graphics and paint programmes, and The Impact of Oil (www.impactofoil.
org), both funded by the Organisation for Scientific Research of the Netherlands.
Ralf Nuhn is a German-born, London and Lille-based intermedia artist who has exhibited
and performed internationally. He is currently working as a practice-based researcher at
the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, London, where he has also obtained a Ph.D. in
Media Arts. His current installation and performance practice is mainly concerned with
relationships between the physical world and the virtual world of computers, and has a
strong focus on audience participation.
Elaine Shemilt is an artist and academic, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and
Shackleton Scholar. She is Professor of Fine Art Printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone
College of Art and Design, the University of Dundee. She studied Sculpture at
Winchester School of Art and Printmaking at the Royal College of Art. Her artistic
practice involves sculpture, installation, printmaking and digital media. She has an
international reputation for innovation in the use of printmaking across forms. In her
early career she exhibited at The Hayward Annual Exhibition in London, The Bradford
International Print Biennale and the Video Show in the Serpentine gallery in London.
More recently her work has been shown at the Imperial War Museum, London and in
Warsaw, Berlin and Singapore.
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