Abstract

In the humanistic tradition, Digital Art opens up thinking spaces of
reflection and substantial contemporary discussions, challenges, dangers,
and proposed transformations of our lives in relation to the digital
era. Thus, Digital Art is the art form with the most comprehensive
potential of visualisation of our information societies, thematising
globalization, media and image revolution, ecological crises,
surveillance, virtualisation of global finance, and societal norms and
aesthetics regarding the human body. As multifarious and complex as
these phenomena are and as diverse as Digital Art itself is, it takes
highly disparate forms, like time-based installation art, telepresence
art, genetic and bio art, robotic or net art. 

But due to the imminent problems of archiving, the digital arts are
threatened by its LOSS – a problem that is reinforced by the
insufficient practices of cultural institutions to display, collect and
research digital art. Post-industrial societies require digital arts
based on contemporary media dispositives to reflect upon current and
future challenges, just like art history was always informed by its
contemporary media technologies. By establishing concerted international
strategies and new scientific tools it is the aim to put media art
histories on a contemporary basis in order to enable the humanities to
meet with its (current) responsibilities. 

Bio

Oliver Grau was appointed first Chair Professor for Image Science in
the german speaking countries at Danube University in 2005. He held more
than 300 lectures and keynotes at conferences worldwide. Grau's 
“Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion” (MIT Press 2003), Book
of the Month Scientific American, is with approx. 950 citations
internationally the most quoted art history monography of the last
decade (H-Index) and received 90+ reviews. He has received several
awards and his publications are translated in 14 languages. His main
research is in the history of media art, immersive images, emotion, the
history of telepresence and artificial life and digital humanities. Grau
was founding director of the MediaArtHistories Conference Series, (Banff
2005, Berlin07, Melbourne09, Liverpool11, Riga13, Montreal15)

The Department for Image Science at the Danube University Krems has a
long and internationally renowned tradition for research in the
histories, archives and theories of Media Art. Several certified
programmes are held including the Erasmus Plus Joint Degree “Media Art
Cultures” in cooperation with the University of Aalborg and Hong Kong
City University among others. The Department co-founded web 2.0 based
research projects such as The Archive of Digital Art and MediaArtHistory
text archive and the Goettweig Online Print Archive (30.000 prints from
Duerer to Klimt) to establish digital research tools and initiate the
establishment of scholarly networks.