CHArt Conference Proceedings, volume six
2003

Anna Bentowska

Editorial

The 19th annual conference of CHArt, Convergent Practices: New Approaches to Art and Visual Culture, was held at Birkbeck College, University of London on 6th and 7th November 2003. A selection of papers presented at the conference is published in the present volume. The speakers looked at current developments in humanities computing and considered specific applications of digital media to a range of topics including museum display and the study and practice of art.

In his key-note address (paper not included), Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, recalled how the concept of computer technology was generally regarded as alien to the museum display in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We have come a long way since. The computer, in its many different guises, has invaded the gallery space. Computerisation was originally seen strictly as a collection management tool. Now it has developed to facilitate all-encompassing digitisation and is increasingly becoming part of complex information and communication systems that extend beyond museum walls. Numerous e-learning initiatives are benefiting from this development, as webcasts for school students and other Internet users are becoming ever more popular. Visitors to galleries not only accept but also expect to find interesting digital media and are prepared to spend considerable time interacting with such displays. Museum curators are trying to rise to this challenge.

The ever-wider use of the Internet brought about new possibilities in the study and dissemination of art. The joint website of the Tate collections (www.tate.org), sponsored by British Telecom, has become a leader in this respect, benefiting from direct access to collections, as well as the latest technology and specialist designs. Tessa Meijer (paper not included) demonstrated select online resources created by Tate, and discussed issues concerned with art that is difficult to display and document through conventional means. She demonstrated a three-dimensional, interactive model of Henry Moore’s Recumbent Figure and a time-lapse film which records the setting up of Rachel Whiteread’s installations Untitled (Rooms) and Untitled (Stairs) in the gallery.

Malcolm Ferris of the University of Hertfordshire discussed key curatorial issues relating to the display of interactive digital works. Using the digital media gallery at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, UK as a study case, he considered how digital media installations forced the curators to redefine both the gallery space and the role of visitors whose participation is vital for the multifaceted perception of these kinds of artwork.

The world-wide distribution over the Internet of information about looted art has been discussed by Shauna Isaac of the Central Registry for Looted Cultural Property, 1933-1945. Although her paper does not give specific examples, it is believed that the database created by the Central Registry and international cooperation on governmental and other levels, have led to tracking down the whereabouts of a number of artefacts lost in the Nazi period before and during the World War II.

A number of projects in recent years have explored the implications of creating digital content collaboratively, and distributing and sharing it with others. Such projects demonstrate the changing role of the author/artist — forsaking his/her identity— and how this new position affects the autonomy of the work. The London-based project Urban Tapestries, a subject of Giles Lane’s paper (not included), is representative of such a new kind of interactive media communication. Using palm-top devices, the participants input their location-specific contributions in a variety of digital formats (sound, text, image or film footage). The resulting collective work creates a new semantic entity while retaining characteristics of individual contributions.

Although new information systems employ novel techniques that might not have precedents, equally, past intellectual models have been called upon as possible parallels for emerging semantic communications. The work created through the Urban Tapestries project, for example, may be seen as all encompassing artwork, a popular modern Gesamtkunstwerk. Looking at television production, Stephen Boyd Davis considers art by old masters as possible models for today’s communication metaphors in digital broadcasting. He suggests the blending of different realities that can be found in a medieval triptych as a parallel for digital spaces that are being created in news broadcasts. He also identifies the composition of Japanese woodcuts with text banners embedded in the main frame as another important influence. The ancient idea of the theatre of memory has served Katja Kwastek to draw a parallel with visualisation of information.

Computer visualisation is primarily understood as making appearances visible, and Daniela Sirbu’s paper introduces an excellent example of a digital reconstruction of an un-built project by the 19th-century French architect, Henri Labrouste. A 3D computer model of Le pont destiné à réunir la France à l’Italie (1829) based on the architect’s original projection drawings was Sirbu’s main objective, but once created it equally served other objectives. The dynamic character of her cinematic model allowed her to explore the multidimensional space and to simulate the stages in the architect’s designing processes while also recreating the presumed, intended symbolic content of his project. She discusses the model not only in the context of Beaux-Arts design theory and its relationships with classical Antiquity, specific to Labrouste, but also in the framework of modern theories of space. One such theory was formulated by Christian Norberg-Schultz who considered space from pragmatic and perceptual, existential, cognitive and abstract positions. He was much influenced by ideas of the sociologist, Talcott Parsons, about convergence of the social sciences and a possible single theoretical framework that could integrate both specific and general aspects of human actions. The digital reconstruction of Labrouste’s un-built bridge offers a semantic ground for the examination and interpretation of theories of space. While providing a flexible digital research tool, Sirbu’s model is also an inspiring artistic space in its own right, complete with colours, textures and music.

As the strictly technical convergence of digital media has become a common practice, the creators of electronic resources are now facing new challenges. Increasingly, we expect digital information not just to be available, but also to respond to ever-more sophisticated enquiry. A move towards a semantic convergence seems to be a possible answer to this quest. The move is becoming a possibility thanks to information and communication structures and standards developed over the last twenty years or so, though this has not been without problems. It is hoped that the image selected for the conference poster is not an omen. Inspired by the work of Mansfield More, it shows parallel lines that cannot converge within the available space.

As we move towards a greater integration of both technical and semantic processes we must not forget that there is still a need for better understanding and dissemination of best practice in such basic areas of computing as the digitisation of visual resources. The concerns expressed by Veronica Davis Perkins show that the digitisation of historic material still raises many questions that have not yet found universal answers. Even the enormous technical potential and computing standards available now cannot promise solutions for all problems and all users.

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