COMD Talk featuring Oliver Grau: 21st Century Digital Art and Its Challenges

21st Century Digital Art and its Challenge for our Memory Institutions : Tools and International Strategies for its Research, Collection and Preservation

Speaker: Oliver Grau (Art Historian and Media Theoretician)

Date: February 21
Time: 12:30-13:30
Place: FFB 022

Abstract:

From Computer Graphics to Interactive Installations, Virtual Art, NFT and AI-Imagery. In the past six decades Media Art has evolved into a critical field at the intersection of art, science and technology, however, a significant loss threatens this art form due to rapid technological obsolescence and static documentation strategies. This talk will give an outline for research, documentation, and preservation of digital art by a.) developing international archive-research infrastructures, as demanded by international experts since the Liverpool Declaration. b.) contributing to the development of infrastructures with museums, which are interested in bringing the art of our time into their collections. The European Archive of Digital Art (ADA) www.archive-digitalart.eu addresses these issues through an innovative strategy of ‘collaborative archiving’, social Web 2.0, 3.0 features foster the engagement of the international Media Art community, web 3.0 elements are integrated through a ‘bridging thesaurus’ linking ADAs extended documentation with ‘traditional’ art history databases to facilitate interdisciplinary and trans-historical comparative analyses. ADA informs a needed concerted museum network, to collect, exhibit and preserve digital art forms.

Bio:

Oliver Grau has expanded the humanities understanding of the digital revolution by re-imagining the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology. As a founder of the interdisciplinary field of “MediaArtHistory” (Google: 1.5 Mio. hits) and its biannual world conference series, his contributions have explored the history of the virtual and immersive media across technologies and fields. Grau served for 20 years as Chair Professor for Image Science at various Universities. Since 1999 he is also Founder and Director of the Archive of Digital Art (ADA) www.archive-digitalart.eu/