A Companion to Digital Art

Reflecting the dynamic creativity of its subject, this definitive guide spans the evolution, aesthetics, and practice of today’s digital art, combining fresh, emerging perspectives with the nuanced insights of leading theorists.

• Showcases the critical and theoretical approaches in this fast-moving discipline
• Explores the history and evolution of digital art; its aesthetics and politics; as well as its often turbulent relationships with established institutions
• Provides a platform for the most influential voices shaping the current discourse surrounding digital art, combining fresh, emerging perspectives with the nuanced insights of leading theorists
• Tackles digital art’s primary practical challenges – how to present, document, and preserve pieces that could be erased forever by rapidly accelerating technological obsolescence
• Up-to-date, forward-looking, and critically reflective, this authoritative new collection is informed throughout by a deep appreciation of the technical intricacies of digital art

List of Figures viii

Notes on Contributors xi

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction: From Digital to Post‐Digital—Evolutions of an Art Form 1
Christiane Paul

Part I Histories of Digital Art 21

1 The Complex and Multifarious Expressions of Digital Art and Its Impact on Archives and Humanities 23
Oliver Grau

2 International Networks of Early Digital Arts 46
Darko Fritz

3 Art in the Rear‐View Mirror: The Media‐Archaeological Tradition in Art 69
Erkki Huhtamo Copyrighted Material

4 Proto‐Media Art: Revisiting Japanese Postwar Avant‐garde Art 111
Machiko Kusahara

5 Generative Art Theory 146
Philip Galanter

6 Digital Art at the Interface of Technology and Feminism 181
Jennifer Way

7 The Hauntology of the Digital Image 203
Charlie Gere

8 Participatory Art: Histories and Experiences of Display 226
Rudolf Frieling

Part II Aesthetics of Digital Art 247

9 Small Abstract Aesthetics 249
Max Bense

10 Aesthetics of the Digital 265
Sean Cubitt

11 Computational Aesthetics 281
M. Beatrice Fazi and Matthew Fuller

12 Participatory Platforms and the Emergence of Art 297
Olga Goriunova

13 Interactive Art: Interventions in/to Process 310
Nathaniel Stern

14 The Cultural Work of Public Interactives 330
Anne Balsamo

Part III Network Cultures: The Politics of Digital Art 353

15 Shockwaves in the New World Order of Information and Communication 355
Armin Medosch

16 Critical Intelligence in Art and Digital Media 384
Konrad Becker

17 The Silver Age of Social Media: Nettime.org and the Avant‐Garde of the ’90s 400
McKenzie Wark

18 Art in the Corporatized Sphere: The Impact of Commercial Social Media on Online Artistic Practice 413
Kyle Chayka

19 Artistic Visualization 426
Lev Manovich

20 Critical Play: The Productive Paradox 445
Mary Flanagan

Part IV Digital Art and the Institution 461

21 Contemporary Art and New Media: Digital Divide or Hybrid Discourse? 463
Edward A. Shanken

22 One of Us!: On the Coupling of New Media Art and Art Institutions 482
Richard Rinehart

23 The Digital Arts In and Out of the Institution—Where to Now? 494
Sarah Cook with Aneta Krzemień Barkley

24 The Nuts and Bolts of Handling Digital Art 516
Ben Fino‐Radin

25 Trusting Amateurs with Our Future 537
Jon Ippolito

26 Enabling the Future, or How to Survive FOREVER 553
Annet Dekker

27 Exhibition Histories and Futures: The Importance of Participation and Audiences 575
Beryl Graham

Index 597

Christiane Paul is Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School, New York, USA, and also Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Prof. Paul is a noted curator who oversees the Whitney’s artport website and has for more than a decade conceived and administered the museum’s new media exhibitions, including Data Dynamics (2001), Profiling (2007), and Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011). Other curatorial work includes The Public Private (Kellen Gallery, The New School, 2013); Biennale Quadrilaterale (Rijeka, Croatia, 2009-10); Feedforward - The Angel of History (LABoral, Spain, 2009); and INDAF Digital Art Festival (Incheon, Korea, 2009). She is the author of Digital Art (2003), New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (2008), and co-editor with Margot Lovejoy and Victoria Vesna of Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (2011).

Digital art is a complex and vibrantly dynamic form whose diversity reflects the exponential growth curve in computing power. This new companion to the genre gives readers an inclusive, in-depth understanding of digital art, covering its history and evolution, aesthetics, and politics, as well as its often turbulent relationships with established institutions. The volume provides a platform for the most influential voices shaping the current discourse surrounding digital art. Their nuanced insights afford a robust and coherent appreciation of the current state of the field – and the possible paths its future development may follow.

Combining the seasoned perspectives of leading international experts with fresh work by emerging scholars, the companion tackles key issues in digital art. It showcases critical and theoretical approaches from across the spectrum, taking in art-historical, philosophical, political, and gendered perspectives, among many others. The volume also covers digital art’s primary practical challenges – how to present, document, and preserve pieces that could be erased forever by rapidly accelerating technological obsolescence. Up-to-date, forward-looking, and critically reflective, this authoritative new collection is informed throughout by a deep appreciation of the technical intricacies of digital art.