Technology and ‘the death of Art History’
CHArt ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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Technology and ‘the death of Art History’
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Charlotte Frost
Art History is Technology
This paper demonstrates the way in which digital technologies destabilise the authority of art historical knowledge systems. It does this by using the combined archival theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Friedrich A Kittler to establish a clear connection between the meaning held in bodies of art information and the prevailing modes in which said information can be stored and transferred. It indicates how the discipline of art history developed by using photography as an analytical tool, yet in doing such, created ideas about art that were not just represented by photographic examples of artworks, but qualified by a set of photographic standards. It claims therefore that the experience of the artwork was in dialogue with the technicity of the photograph. What the paper moves on to show are some of the meanings conferred on art discourse by internet archival technicity. It relates themes and ideas in contemporary art and theory to internet archival technicity. The manner in which it achieves this is by applying the theory of the technical archival imperative to online Net art-related contextual platforms, or ‘artwares’ (such as the Visitors Studio, by Furtherfield.org), while indicating their thematic associations with art discourse more widely. In doing this it indicates the notion of the ‘performative’ embedded in contemporary art engagements. The central assertion of this paper is that technology literally and metaphorically impacts the art experience as a whole and always has done. It shows how art history is based in technological development, and it concludes that that accepting this offers to truly reinvigorate art historical/critical discourse – not to mention provide better scope for addressing the histories of digital arts. It closes by returning to Visitors Studio in a discussion of where systems for generating engagements with art might take art historical knowledge in the future.