CHArt CHArt Computers and the History of Art - 1998 Conference Paper Abstract
Convergence of text, image and sound is characteristic of the acceleration of modernity from the illustrated magazine to CD-ROM and the internet. Yet at least since the 30s, august commentators like Arnheim and Panofsky havepointed towards the failure of convergences, like that of the talking film, to provide an integrated experience for audiences. The problem is only exacerbated when we make virtues of interactivity and connectivity. Digital media have drawn upon the classic media of the enlightenment - the history of cataloguing rather than that of books and magazines, and on the history of the map rather than that of pictures - to provide an ordered, navigable and administrable response to the centrifugal forces of electronic networks and user choice. But the history of collections has also a less rational and instrumental side, traceable through the fashion for cabinets des merveilles and Wunderkammers, and forming a curious underbelly to the rationalist carapace of scientific management. These two modes of organisation enter into a dialectic whose twists are even now being worked out in new media. In what directions are knowledge architectures evolving in the sixth decade of computing?