Algorithms in Art
A culturally situated perspective on art’s development with digital technology over 30 years in Denmark
Keywords:
Digital art, Algorithms in Art, algorithm, media art histories, culturally situatedAbstract
This article examines a culturally situated perspective on art’s development with digital technologies and considers what this perspective implies for art-historical writing. Drawing on empirical research into thirty years of Danish art history within the framework of the project Algorithms in Art, it proposes an approach that is both culturally situated and historiographically reflective, emphasising how digital technologies have been engaged through artistic practice and interpretation rather than treated as neutral tools or universal drivers of progress. Instead of following linear art-historical narratives shaped by technological determinism, medium specificity, or anxieties about automation, the article approaches technology as culturally embedded and critically negotiated within situated artistic practices. This perspective applies not only to the artworks themselves but also to the methodological orientation behind the empirical mapping of these practices, which deliberately avoids media-specific categories and foregrounds artists’ own reflections on technology. By conceptualising algorithms as practised technical concepts embedded in cultural and social contexts, the article opens up a pluralist art history attentive to relational, temporal, and infrastructural dynamics. It asks: How can we understand art’s development with digital technologies – and what significance does this understanding hold for how we write art history now and in the future?
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Refererede kunstværker
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