About
Digital Art
What does it mean to speak of an art that is digital? The productive discussions during Digital Art’s introductory year (2017-18) have shown that we need to put pressure on the existing definition of ‘digital art’ as ‘digital-born, computable art that is created, stored, and distributed via digital technologies’ (Paul, Digital Art, 2016, p. 2). This year, Digital Art proposes to expand its theoretical project towards examining what the term ‘digital’ might mean for art as such. Definitions of the digital vary widely across fields and disciplines, necessitating a broadening of our previous focus on art practice to take in discussions from media theory and the history of technology, as well as accounts of digital culture more generally conceived. Our central research questions for the year will therefore be: If the digital is a complex interdisciplinary concept, what is at stake in calling art ‘digital’? And how does a close analysis of the digital as a technological and cultural construction enable new discourses concerning art practices in a digital age?
Our new programme of events frames this discussion around the three senses of digital that are crucial to art practice today, namely the digital as a technology, as a medium, and as an aesthetic. Along the lines of this tripartite division further significant questions will structure each term’s discussions: (1) What relation does digital technology have to the final work as we experience it through interfaces? (2) Under what conditions can we think of the digital as a medium? (3) Is there an aesthetic form specific to the digital, and if so, what is its impact on art and visual culture?
Themes
Michaelmas Term 2018: The Digital as Technology
The German media theorist Friedrich Kittler famously claimed that the condition of the digital was one of substituting surfaces for the material technologies beneath. ‘Inside the computer’, he wrote, ‘everything becomes a number’, and so every image produced through computation is reducible to code alone. This term, we investigate the gulf between representation and the technologies that make it possible, asking to what extent the subterranean world of numbers might determines the digital art that it produces.
Administrative assistance: Networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk
Convenors
Convenors
Dr Aline Guillermet (JRF, King’s College, Visual Culture, History of Art)
Nathaniel Zetter (PhD candidate (Faculty of English)
Previous convenors
Dr Mara Polgovsky (JRF, Queens’ College, Latin American Studies, MML)
Dr Vid Simoniti (JRF, Churchill College, Philosophy, History of Art)
Dr Martin Zeilinger ( Lecturer in Media, Dept. of English & Media, Anglia Ruskin University)
Faculty Advisors
Professor Pete de Bolla (Professor of Cultural History and Aesthetics, Faculty of English)
Dr Amy Tobin (Lecturer in the History of Art and Curator of Exhibitions, Events and Research, Kette's Yard)
Programme 2018-19
Digital Art |
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The Digital as Technology I: Coding 11 October 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Reading session - Digital Art |
The Digital as Technology II: Visualisation 25 October 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Reading session - Digital Art |
Extending Perceptual Capacities: Software or Hardware Update? 08 November 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Maarten Steenhagen (Cambridge) - Digital Art |
Artist's Talk: Physical/Non Physical 22 November 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Jeff Thompson (Cambridge) - Digital Art |
The Digital as Media (RG) 24 January 2019, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Reading seminar - Digital Art |
Artist's Talk: Bodily Inscriptions: Life-Writing and Everyday Archives 07 February 2019, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Erica Scourti (Artist) - Digital Art |
POSTPONED: Blind Windows 21 February 2019, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Cadence Kinsey (York) - Digital Art |
Other Perspectives: Landscape Beyond Human 07 March 2019, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Olga Smith (Warwick) - Digital Art |
Blind Windows 24 April 2019, Different time and day. Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Cadence Kinsey (York) |
New Research on Digital Art 16 May 2019, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Work-in-Progress Seminar. Carleigh Morgan (Cambridge), Steyn Bergs (Amsterdam), Lawrence Alexander (Cambridge) |
Past events
Digital Art |
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'Art and Money Online' in Retrospect 10 October 2017, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute of Art) - Digital Art |
Theorising Digital Art as Financial Technology 24 October 2017, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Reading session - Digital Art |
Digital Art as Critical Medium of Exchange 07 November 2017, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Reading Session - Digital Art |
The Artist Leaving the Googleplex 21 November 2017, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Andrew Norman Wilson (Artist) - Digital Art |
The Aesthetics of Surveillance 25 January 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Reading session - Digital Art |
Seeing across the Distance: The Dreams and Fears of Televisual Utopias 08 February 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Manu Luksch (Artist) - Digital Art |
CANCELLED due to strike: Metric Mysticism 22 February 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Zach Blas (Artist, Goldsmiths, London) - Digital Art |
POSTPONED: Crowdsourcing National Security: Gamification Practices in the US-Mexico Border 08 March 2018, Location and date to the session tba soon Joana Moll (Artist) - Digital Art |
Reconfiguring Human Perception 03 May 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Reading session - Digital Art |
Postponed: Crowdsourcing National Security: Gamification Practices in the US-Mexico 24 May 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Joana Moll (Artist) - Digital Art |
Working Memory 31 May 2018, Seminar Room S1, 1st floor. Alison Richard Building. NB Different room today* Ben Thorp Brown (Artist) - Digital Art. |
Crowdsourcing National Security: Gamification Practices in the US-Mexico Border 07 June 2018, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building. Joana Moll (Artist) - Digital Art |
Cancelled: Extending Perceptual Capacities: Software or Hardware Update? 14 June 2018, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Maarten Steenhagen (Cambridge) - Digital Art |
Blog
• Report: Michaelmas Term 2017 (Diary) – 16 January 2018
• Report: 'Seeing across the Distance: The Dreams and Fears of Televisual Utopias' – 2 March 2018