CHArt TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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Digital Archive Fever
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Bridget McKenzie, Flow Associates, London, UK; Jon Pratty, 24 Hour Museum, Brighton, UK
Your Paintings: Institutions, Identities and Interactions
The presenters will explore the challenges and possibilities of interpreting digitised visual art collections in ways that respond to opportunities offered by the new wave of the web. They will explore how new approaches to the web can radically alter and enhance the nature of institutions’ relationships with their audiences.
Alternative taxonomies and new tagging technology could generate richer ‘neural networks’ of meaning between paintings, their makers, their histories, their various locations and the full range of possible interpreters. This could bring new responsibilities for curators in the making of meaning.
All these possibilities are enshrined in an emerging national cataloguing project promoted by the Public Catalogue Foundation. It aims to use the latest online technologies to democratise access to the nation’s paintings, 80% of which are not visible to the public. This national project is not tied to the existing political structures of cultural institutions, so it offers an exciting opportunity to build networks of similarity and serendipity in a sustainable way.
The distribution of publicly-owned paintings, many of which are in non-cultural venues such as police stations or hospitals, is the biggest opportunity for this project but also its biggest challenge. This paper will draw out the nature of these challenges, looking at new ways to make connections.