Sight as Site in the Digital Age

This volume presents a broad coverage of theoretical issues that deal with digital culture, representation and ideology in art and museums, and other cultural sites, offering new insights into issues of representation in the digitization of art. It critically examines the roles of museum and archives in the digital age and reexamines the intricate relations between sight and site in art, museums, exhibitions, theme parks, theatre performances, music videos, and films. The collection represents a multidisciplinary approach to the complex issues underlying the advent of technologies and digital culture. The rise of visual culture since the twentieth century can be accounted for by the advent of technology in film, TV, museum exhibitions, and the wide use of websites, but it can also be understood as a paradigmatic shift toward representation as a visual means to interpret culture, with new understandings of the site-sight dilemma and the co-implications in related tensions. Complicating the issue of representation is the rise of digital culture, as digital sites replace actual physical sites. This book explores how the virtual has replaced the actual, and in what ways, and to what effects, the digital has displaced the physical. With contributions by museum curators, communications scholars, visual artists, theatre artists, filmmakers, literary critics, and historians, this volume is of appeal to academics and graduate students in information science, art, media, performance, literary and cultural studies, and history. The book binds together different concepts such as site, sight and digitalization in a very original way. It convincingly gathers contributions from academics and practitioners, artists and museum specialists. The chapters are theoretically well-founded, show an interesting breadth of content and are also dealing with current developments. Monika Gänssbauer, Professor of Chinese and Head of the Institute of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden The chapters raise important and latest questions and discussions on the impact of digital technology has on art, culture, creativity, representation and innovation. They are original in dealing with latest examples in recent years, especially during the pandemic, with reflections and philosophical discussions on the transformation digital culture undergoes in relation to human and posthuman contexts, with examinations of art works, archives and museum collections, exhibitions, theme parks, theatre performances, films and music videos that encompass cultures from ancient to contemporary, from the West to the East, and from physical to digital. Jack Leong, Associate Dean of Research and Open Scholarship, York University Libraries, Toronto, Canada

Offers new insights into issues of representation in the digitization of art Critically examines the roles of museum and archives in the digital age Re-examines the intricate relations between sight and site in visual media

Auteur

Kwok-kan TAM is Chair Professor of English and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. He is former Head and current member of the International Ibsen Committee, University of Oslo. His recent publications include the books Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film (2019); Chinese Ibsenism: Reinventions of Women, Class and Nation (2019); and The Englishized Subject: Postcolonial Writings in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia (2019). He edits the Springer book series Digital Culture and Humanities.

Contenu
Introduction. Site as Sight in the Digital Age: Art, the Museum and Representation.- Chapter 1. What is a Site? Human Scales, Embodied Experiences and the Physical-Digital Interface.- Chapter 2. Site as Sight: Virtual Andersen in East Asia.- Chapter 3. Archives and Museums in the Decontextualised Digital World.- Chapter 4. Do Museums Still Need Objects? Politics of Museums Reconsidered in the Digital Era.- Chapter 5. Museums and Archives in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Post-Representation.- Chapter 6. Implicit Heritage Values in Online Collection Databases: Assessing the Presentation of Egyptian Artefacts in Art Museum Contexts.- Chapter 7. Large Datasets and the Particularity of Art: Will There Be Any Art in the Deep Learning Age?.- Chapter 8. Van Gogh's Universe in the Crossways of Audiovisual Art and Digital Technology: A Comparative Case Study from an Intermedial Perspective.- Chapter 9. New Stage Aesthetics in the Digital Age.- Chapter 10. Luvv Bazar: Queer and Feminist Representation in Music Video After the Internet.- Chapter 11. Demystify Twenty-First Century Creativity, Innovation and Education through Film Analysis.- Chapter 12. Visual Art as Alternative Epistemological Approach.