Digital Art: A Contemporary Art

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Presentation Title:
  • Digital Art: A Contemporary Art

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Abstract:

  • After video emerged as a trend in the 1960s, it gradually acquired the status of artistic medium over close to 30 years. If it took as long for digital technology to achieve recognition as a contemporary artistic medium after having become democratized in the 1980s, then the time for acknowledgment has come. Thanks in part to the widespread use of the Internet and its mass appeal, digital culture, in all its forms, has become part and parcel of everyday life. Digital and networking technologies have made their way into all private and public spheres of contemporary society; they have also had an impact on how we relate to others and on our worldview. The time has come, then, to consider the consequences of such massive permeation for the art world, without neglecting any of its key stakeholders, whether artists or collectors, critics or curators, galleries or institutions. For the art world is an ecosystem with well-established rules. We must also acknowledge that the digital medium has a wealth of specific characteristics, which may be insidious at times—so much so that all artworks worldwide are now shaped, in part, by digital technology, sometimes unbeknownst to their creators. The way we perceive the world has changed now that it fits in the palm of one hand or can be grasped between thumb and forefinger. From now on, everything on the Internet belongs to us, from the most trivial files to the most sensitive data. The final impediments to acknowledging the interconnection of digital technology and art—from media permanence to artwork scarcity—have crumbled away. That is because digital media and art now resonate together, because the practices of artists and amateurs have become intertwined. It is now time to consider what digital technology brings to art and vice versa. It is now or never.

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