FULL PDF
Abstract
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.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/dah.2020.5.75504
Author
Christiane Paul
is Chief Curator / Director of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, as well as Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and her books are A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, May 2016); Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003, 2008, 2015); Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts(Intellect, 2011; Chinese edition, 2012); and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum she curated exhibitions including Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965 - 2018 (2018), Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011) and Profiling (2007), and is responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to Internet art. Other curatorial work includes The Question of Intelligence (Kellen Gallery, The New School, NYC, 2020). Little Sister (is watching you, too) (Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC, 2015); and What Lies Beneath (Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2015).