Last week I attended the annual CHArt conference for the first time, which was held at the British Computer Society in Southampton Street. CHArt, Computers and the History of Art research group, celebrates this year 25 years of functioning as a friendly and inclusive group that holds an annual conference and publishes a corresponding journal on of research papers on a wide range of discourses relating to the the relationship between the computer and the history of art.
The content of the papers, and the backgrounds of the speakers was indeed very wide ranging, and this was supported by a supportive approach by the CHArt committee and chairpersons. The papers were 'curated' into four sessions - Technology, Curation, Access and Dissemination, opened by a keynote speech by Will Vaughan, Professor Emeritus at Birkbeck, London. Professor Vaughan was one of the founding members of the research group, and in his opening paper entitled 'Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards' he described how the original group was a workshop run on a local basis in the 1980's. Interesting original ephemera such as typewritten newsletters and survey documents to decide the name of the group (such as HATE and HALITOSIS...) were the background to an overview set out by Vaughan as a grassroots organization that mapped the relationship between the computer and the impact on the arts.
From a person of my generation, his first hand description of the perception of the computer, and the digital in the early 1980's was very interesting to additionally consider how computer software is now branded, designed and marketed as welcoming and friendly. He explained how computing was associated with 'men in white coats', employed predominantly for data management, but when it came to art historians there was considerable mistrust in putting responsibility in this intangible system. Vaughan enjoyed exploring the possibilities of this medium getting to grips with the BBC basic software, where he wrote a programme that could generate faux Mondrian artworks creating a game whereby the user had to guess a computer generated Mondrian from an original by the master. The undertone of this game, which tests connoisseurship, is a strong thread running through visual art history - to be able to distinguish what is valued art, and what is not.
Somewhere in the 1990's, Vaughan describes a 'watershed' - with the acceleration of digital production and mediated communication - we are suddenly living within a whole new set of immaterial circumstances. After the invention of the daguerreotype, painting became much more self consciously about the paint - evidenced in the 'pure' painting of Mark Rothko. Discussing the digital and Internet as a time- based medium, Vaughan seem concerned with the lack of 'stillness' in digitally generated artwork, suggesting that a sense of 'stillness' was a prerequisite for a fine artwork.
'Art History is Technology' - Dr Charlotte Frost
Frost's paper highlighted how digital technologies sought to destabilise the authority of art historical knowledge through references to Foucauldian theory and Derrida's 'Archive Fever'. Derrida's 1995 theory is contingent upon the external happening to physically materialise a sense of archive. Frost then went onto relate our current discipline of art history as being deeply embedded in using photography as an analytical and recording tool. She explored more recent examples (Visitors Studio, 2004) of 'digital art' being created and curated online in a performative manner. Overall, Frost is proposed that art history relies of technological developments, and latest developments of artists work using digital media opens and expands critical/ historical developments.
'Real Time Realtime - Time as a Technological Material in Art' - Jamie Allen, Newcastle University
Predominantly exploring our experience and perceptions of time in relation to digital media, Allen sets out an art historical context that references the beginnings of conceptual art, Alan Kaprow and a plethora of theorists such as Hansen, Manovich and Heidegger. Allen's outlined a theory of our experience of time in relation to digital media; with three distinctions of 'real-time', 'realtime' and 'real time', characterised by conceptions of time, chronocracy, and simulations of the real. Allen then went onto to relate his theories to examples of digital media artworks, including his own work, that discuss awareness and materiality of time through manipulation of digital processes.
Life after Death - the relevance of digital technologies for entry into the 'canon' of temporary, ephemeral and non-gallery sited works - Tracy Piper - Wright, Glyndwr University
This paper proposed the importance of digital technology, predominantly digital photography, recorded in open access databases online such as Flickr to document 'real' evidence of temporary, ephemeral public artworks. Piper- Wright's examples of the artist's marketing photography, in contrast with the audiences response online through images of their experience in and around these works highlighted a stark difference in perception and projection of the physical artwork produced an insightful divide between experience and idealised intention of the artist. Her proposal of 'democratic documentation' presented interesting discussion, questioning ownership of photography of an artists work, and whether this form of documentation can be discussed in other areas of fine art production.
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