Proposed Art History Essay - How can we experience electronic art?

BVA 312  Assessment 3.  Essay

Essay:    Students are to produce a 3000 (+/- 10%) word essay.

Content will cover an art issue arising from the lectures/tutorials chosen by the student and negotiated with the tutor and discuss the material using appropriate contemporary critical theories introduced in lectures.

Abstract: Students are required to produce an abstract of at least 200 words that frames the question to be addressed in the essay after some negotiation with the tutor. This abstract will be handed in Monday 16^th September at the beginning of class.

The abstract will be included as the opening page of the essay but not count toward the essay length.

The finished essay must:

• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the relevant issue(s)
• Articulate a convincing argument
• Be well structured
• Use appropriate references to back up your argument
• Be referenced professionally using the APA system.
• Be the student’s own work

Format of Essay:

·        Word processed and printed

·        Times New Roman 12 pt

·        5cm margin on left

·        15mm spacing recommended for margins

·        Word count included on final page

Essays will be first submitted through ‘Safe assignment ‘ Blackboard

Reception of Electronic Art

What is the purpose of dedicated digital art museums?

What museums promote electronic art and 

Looking at current museums that are dedicated to electronic art, and the reception of the diverse range of mediums that encompass electronic art. (ZKM, HeK)

Hardware concerns for cutting edge exhibitions. (old hardware is equally as finnicky)

Many top museums have adopted an electronic aspect to display with a percentage holding learning workshops for students.

Germany leading the way with dedicated electronic displays

ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 
A New History of Art
The 30th anniversary of the ZKM | Karlsruhe is the occasion to retell the history of art in the 20th and 21st centuries with its collection, which is considered one of the most important media art collections in the world. With more than 500 objects, the exhibition shows the diversity of the arts in the media change. It includes photography, graphics, painting and sculpture as well as computer-based works, film, holography, kinetic art, op-art, sound art, visual poetry and video art.

Through its perspective that spans all genres and media, Writing the History of the Future opens up a new perspective on the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in an exhibition space measuring over 6,000 m2. This era of rapid technological change brought about by electronic and digital information and communication technologies initiated an unprecedented democratization of art and culture. Writing the History of the Future explores how photography’s fulfilled promise to individualize visual representations of the world was fulfilled again by the activists of video art in the 1960s. With the sudden availability of video technology, the activists depicted realities that at the time were not shown on television or by the film industry, and they developed an aesthetic that still influences our visual culture today. The expansion of technical visual media, from the panel painting to the screen, dispersed art in a new visual culture, intertwining mass culture and high culture. With the spread of computer technology in the 1950s, our notion of the creative act changed and the automation and algorithmization of the arts began. This apparatus that processed code provoked debate rather like today’s discussions about artificial intelligence. Electronic media also changed how sound was produced and perceived in the twentieth century. Sounds and noise that were previously unacceptables became a medium of fine art, of Sound Art.

The Empowerment of the Viewer: The Route to Participatory Arts
The exhibition Writing the History of the Future evidences how fundamentally devices have changed the relationship to the artwork – both in terms of production and perception. The production of art no longer focuses solely on the artist as subject, but now includes various actors, be they devices or people. Through the development of participative, interactive, and performative arts, from moving images to moving beholders, since the 1960s open works have been created that invite exhibition visitors not only to look, but also to act.

The presentation of the ZKM collection, which represents a selection from over 9,500 works, is distinguished by its cross-genre staging. It shows the transformation of the genre portrait, the representation of the body, landscape, and architecture from painting to interactive computer installation. It shows the updating of the ancient medium of writing under the conditions of information technology as well as of art as a format for collective and individual memory. Thus the exhibition presents art that is radically contemporaneous – art in which artists reflect on the present using the technical media of their time. It offers a unique opportunity to gain a comprehensive overview of the actual development of art in the twentieth century beyond painting and sculpture, with various larger and smaller scale installations as well as numerous incunabula of media art.

The Exhibition as a Space for Experience and Thoughts
Writing the History of the Future is not only a collection of objects, it is also an assembly of subjects. Lounges invite you to sit down and talk about what you’ve seen with friends and family, or meet in the Ackerspace for workshops and seminars. In the BÄM-Lab, the makerspace of the ZKM, experiments are done together.

Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel - House of Electronic Arts Basel
https://www.museums.ch/org/de/elektronischeKunst

The HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) is the national competence center that deals with all art forms that deal with and reflect on the media and new technologies. With its interdisciplinary orientation, the HeK offers the general public insights into art productions of various genres in the exploration of art, media and technology. In a diverse program of exhibitions, smaller festival formats, performances and concerts, the HeK addresses current social issues and issues as well as technological and aesthetic developments. In addition to the event and exhibition activities, the HeK deals with the collection methodology and the preservation of digital art.