The Digital Arts In and Out of the Institution:Where to Now?

Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History are reference volumes that chart the influence of key ideas and theories. The Companion to Digital Art includes chapters devoted to histories, aesthetics, networked cultures and politics and the institutionalisation od digital art. Contributors include Lev Manovich, McKenzie Wark, Edward Shanken, Beryl Graham, Jon Ippolito, Sean Cubitt, Oliver Grau, Charlie Gere, Machiko Kusahara and others. "Exploring formats for exhibiting digital art that have emergeed over time, the authors use the questions who, when, what, where, how, and why as a structure for approaching the curating of digital arts. As they point out, the new media landscape has been forming for over fifty years and the ciritical study of curatorial practice is an even younger field that came into being only in the past three decades and long after art history or museology.... the chapter sketches out an overview of the curatorial approaches and uses selective examples to illustrate curatorial models within institutions and on the 'peripheries' of institutional practice. they also address the social contexts in which digital art has emerged - the grass-roots, ad-hoc, and temporary get-togethers and initiatives that developed along with or even tried to counter the commercial digital landscape" - Christiane Paul, editor