Media Art Histories and the Political Iconography of Information Societies

Speaker: 
Professor Oliver Grau, Chair Professor for Image Science, Danube University Krems

Media Art Histories and the Political Iconography of Information Societies
Oliver Grau discusses how Digital Art opens up thinking and reflection on contemporary debates, challenges, dangers, and the transformations of our lives in the digital era. Digital artists explore international topics of global relevance, including climate change, genetic engineering, the rise of the post-human body/body-images, new extremes of surveillance, virtual financial economics, and the media (r-)evolution of the image. These complexities are reflected by artists including Victoria VESNA (Body), Tom CORBY (Climate), Paolo CIRIO (Finance), Jeffrey SHAW (Image/Media), and Seiko MIKAMI (Surveillance). What role does digital imagery play in a new political iconography of the information society? 
Yet due to the imminent problems of archiving, the digital arts are threatened by LOSS due to the deficiencies of cultural institutions to display, collect and research digital art. Although Digital Artworks play a part at more than 200 festivals worldwide, very few of these complex art and image forms appear in the permanent collections of museums, archives and libraries. Festivals rather than museums can now be considered as the most important venues for current developments and discourses on Digital Art. Post-industrial societies require new strategies to solve current and future challenges in archiving such work, just as art history was always informed by its contemporary media technologies. International strategies and new scientific tools are necessary for the humanities to meet with its responsibilities to place the collection and study of media art histories on a contemporary, and sustainable basis.