DigitalCritic

Catherine Mason (A Computer in the Art Room and White Heat, Cold Logic) and I have got our documentary project on the history of computers in art through to the final stages of the ‘Specialist Factual New Talent Pitch Competition’ at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival (DocFest)! This means that alongside a small selection of other would-be factual broadcasters from a variety of disciplines, we will be presenting the project to an audience of commissioning editors and specialist factual producers. We’re so excited to be taking part and getting to learn more about how to pitch and produce a documentary – not to mention meet all the other interesting people there!

We’re also really pleased to be sharing the concept for the documentary (actually we want to make a three-part series) with a wider audience. Though computers have permeated practically every aspect of our modern lives, there is one area people often remain reluctant in accepting computer technology: art! Despite art’s long-running relationship with information technology – what are pencils and paints if not communication tools – computers are often regarded as highly suspicious in art. Somehow it’s not ‘art’ if a computer has been involved. As a result, the rich early history of Computer art remains obscure – along with over fifty years of intense exploration of art and culture in the computer age. For many in-the-know, Alan Turing marks a pivotal moment in the history of art. This is summed up by artist/theorist Lev Manovich who divides art history into ‘Duchamp-land’, where the object is prized, and ‘Turing-land’, where process is champion. Therefore, what we are proposing is to write, produce and present the first ever televised public tour of Turing-land, in order to show this exciting territory to audiences mostly schooled in Duchamp-land.

We really look forward to discussing this project with you more soon, but in the mean time, do wish us luck!

I am really excited to announce that the first book in the Arts Future Book series (rather, the first line in the conversation about the digital future of academic publishing in the arts that Arts Future Book represents) will be mine!

Over the next year I will be researching and writing my book Art History Online: Mailing Lists, Digital Forums and the Future of Criticism. It will provide an account of the use of the email-based discussion list in the arts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I am interested in the list because I believe it represents, among other things, the transition in art history from knowledge that can be comfortably described through a book and a different type of knowledge that can’t. I want to write about the list not only to reclaim its unique history in terms of the way it offered artists a new discursive space, but also because it problematises art historical systems – like the book – and allows me to ask after future models for art critical pursuits.

And as is the Arts Future Book way, I’ll also be finding ways of expanding the discussion the series and my book represent, as well as looking into new publishing technologies to support today’s art critical and contextual acts. For more information, there is currently a great post about Arts Future Book by Gylphi’s editor, Anthony Levings, on PhD2Published right now, where he discusses some of the issues the series taps into. He explains:

“…given that so much digital art is now produced, works of art criticism also need to respond to the restrictions placed on them by print especially when their subject matter is electronic. Out of this dilemma has been born the ‘Art Future Book’ project with the aim of bringing shape and form to the loose and unpredictable art book of the future. The subject is something ideally suited to the ‘book’ series format, even though it paradoxically challenges the whole notion of the very objects it seeks to collect together.”

I’m super excited to announce: Arts Future Book, a research project and academic book series investigating the future of academic publishing in the arts, led by me!

The research project brings together experts in the creative and technological development of publishing to discover what the literally and theoretically book-bound art critical disciplines might absorb from online information networks and emergent publishing systems.

Current project partners are:

• Dr Jussi Parikka, Director of the Cultures of the Digital Economy Research Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, a digital humanities specialist unit.
• Gylphi an academic arts and humanities publisher focusing on the twentieth century and beyond.
• HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, a dedicated laboratory for research into the digital humanities.
• if:book a think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens.
• Open Mute/Progressive Publishing Service an organisation supporting cultural practice in the information age, building knowledge architectures and new publishing tools for cross-platform content.
• PhD2Published an organisation offering academic book publishing advice to early career academics while investigating technical developments in systems for distributing academic research.
• Proboscis/Bookleteer/Story Cubes an organisation developing online tools and offline models that challenge the physical format of the book.

The academic book series, published by Gylphi, seeks to foster new scholarship in the arts, and publish unique works that rethink contemporary visual culture and establish new systems for considering art. It will exploit recent technological advances in publishing to better disseminate such bodies of arts knowledge and develop wider readership and new reader experiences. Each book published within the series will respect established academic standards, while redefining what an academic text might be and how it might be used.

You can keep up to date with the project and the book series through our Facebook page and of course I’ll be blogging some updates here too…

I’m thrilled to announce that in September I’ll be taking up an exciting Research Fellowship at a digital humanities laboratory in Sweden!

I was invited by lab director, Patrik Svensson, to spend two months at the prestigious HUMlab, which is part of Umeå University, and get my latest research project up and running. The set up at HUMlab is really special with lots of like-minded arts/humanities techies all inspiring each other and getting to take advantage of some seriously excellent equipment. A recent noteworthy alumna is Ele Carpenter who took aspects of her Open Source Embroidery project there for a Post-Doctoral Fellowship.

The lab blog is regularly updated with posts from Patrik and all the research fellows who provide a varied commentary on their different research streams. And there’s also a strong seminar series with a tremendous variety of speakers.

I’m really looking forward to hearing about other people’s work and after long spells of solitary confinement in my study, it’s going to be great to be with people again! It’s also wonderful to have the opportunity to get going properly on a project I’ve spent several months putting together (and which also involves writing my first book!!!).

In fact, the only downside of all this is that I’ll have missed the crayfish parties and it’ll be too early for snow!