DIGITAL ART

Digital Art and Digital Museum: theories, practices, and intersections.
The course, divided into 30 hours, is part of the Master’s Degree Programme in ‘Digital and Public Humanities’ and is connected to the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH) in the Department of Humanities.
The aim of the course is to guide the student through the knowledge of artistic practices, from the avant-gardes of the 20th century, to the production of digital art, which led to the conception of the first idea of a virtual museum.

- Knowledge and understanding: the student will be introduced to the art historical context of virtual museums and the development of digital museums through knowledge of art history exhibitions and works by contemporary artists; the methodology adopted by digital artists in the handling of art collections will be analysed.
- Application of knowledge and understanding: ability to recognise the different digital expressions of online collections and to understand the use of specific digital tools adopted by museums for different purposes.
- Understanding: the ability to analyse the digital representation of art in the online and virtual museum, to argue using language and correct formal analysis;
- Communication skills: ability to use appropriate terminology, to comment on and communicate the results of the student's work; to interact with colleagues and professors with respect and effectiveness.

No specific requirements, but knowledge of 20th century art is preferred.

From the point of view of artistic production, the course analyses the theories that animate the debate on the digital museum. Starting with the 20th-century avant-gardes, it will examine artists' works that have interpreted the museum theme through different techniques linked to audiovisual and digital languages.
The role of the museum institution will be examined. The online component has become an exhibition context, a place for the preservation of digital artworks, from net art to generative art, and a platform for interaction with the public. Finally, recent productions dealing with Artificial Intelligence will be examined, both for creative purposes and for exploring production methods and artistic research.
Attention will be paid to the forms of representation of works of art, highlighting the role of digital productions from the artistic field and the creative cultural industries collaborating in curating and interpreting museum spaces to improve access to knowledge of works of art.
The aim of the lectures, which complement the study of the texts in the bibliography, is to provide tools for understanding the phenomenology of artistic processes that use digital media and make use of the pool of data made available by the open-access collections of museums.

Chapters and essays will be defined during the lessons.
C. Paul, Digital Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2015.
C. Paul, A Companion to Digital Art, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2016.
T. Giannini, J. P. Bowen, Museums and Digital Culture. New Perspectives and Research, Springer 2019.
L. Manovich, AI Aesthetics, Strelka press 2019.
Cohen, K., Elkins, J., Aronberg Lavin, M., Macko, N., Schwartz, G., Siegrfied L., S, Stafford, B., Digital Culture and the Practices of Art and Art history, in «Art bulletin», 79, n.2 (1997), pp.187-216.
D. England, T. Schiphorst, N. Bryan-Kins (edited by), Curating the Digital. Space for Art and Interaction, Springer, 2016
Frieling, R., The Museum as producer: Processing Art and Performing a Collection, in New Collecting: Exhibiting and Audience after New Media Art, a cura di Graham, B., London, New York, Ashgate, 2014, pp.133-158.
Grasskamp, W., The Book on the Floor: Andre Malraux and the Imaginary Museum, Getty Research Institute, 2016.
Grau, O. The Complex and Multifarious Expression of Digital Art & Its Impact on Archives and Humanities, in A Companion to Digital Art, a cura di C. Paul, Wiley, Blackwell, Chichester, 2016, pp. 23-45.
Hall, D., The Original and the Reproduction: Art in the Age of Digital Technology, «Visual Resources», 15, nNo. 2(1999), pp. 269-278.

Oral and written.
The exam will consist of an oral presentation of a project and a 2500 words essay.
The interview will focus on a critical analysis of the new digital art environment developed within the digital museum. The assessment will take counts of participation in class discussions and activities.
Attendance is strongly recommended.
Non-attending students have to contact the teacher and need to prepare a 7000 words critical essay on a specific topic.

The lessons will have the projection of slides and power points and will take in exam online case study, with the interaction between professors and students; students will be involved in workshops for critical readings and projecting of virtual museums paths starting from the digital museums investigated.
Lectures will be integrated with seminars, workshops, and in-class student presentations and debates.
The didactic material will be made available through the Moodle e-learning platform.

English

The programme is provisional and there could still be changes in its contents and texts.

written and oral