Digital Visual Studies
My previous post points to the possibilities that digital artistic practices might provide to art educators. I have started with these examples because they are relevant to our current age. It is my explicit goal, throughout this text, to make reference to digital visual artists who identify as Black or Latino/a, as they are all too often left out of conversations of new media theory and practice. I do this as an art educator who identifies as white, who is well-aware of the privileges that this identification has provided. This emphasis will not change systemic racism or patriarchal structures that have been in place for centuries. I am not sure exactly what this emphasis will change, but I know that I need to use the platform that I have to acknowledge these individuals.
Most importantly, I am making reference to these artists because they make the type of art that I have been found compelling for the past twenty years: art that is confrontational, art that is confusing, art that uses a variety of technologies to point out the dysfunctional aspects of systems that are designed to function at the most efficient level possible. This self-reflexivity is one of the most intriguing attributes of digital visual art. (Manovich, 2000; Crowther, 2008). Digital visual art is the term that I will use on this research site to describe art that is made with, or about, digital media. I am using this term as it is less burdened that some of the other, more specific terms that have been used in the recent past: interactive media, computer art, new media, net.art. I am using the word visual in the phrase, so that it references more traditional works of art, as well as digital visual culture, even though many works of digital visual art downplay the visual aspects of the work being presented.
Digital visual culture is, simply put, the myriad cultural forms of visual expression that make use of digital technologies. Digital visual culture encompasses many interrelated fields and practices; at its core, digital visual culture is an offshoot of visual culture. My research has dealt with intersections between visual culture topics as diverse as surveillance, performance art and reality TV, data visualization, and videogames. I have written about each of these topics as they relate to art educational history, theories of curriculum design, and K-12 pedagogical approaches. As I have written about each of these topics, they have changed, often while I was in the process of writing. While this presents certain challenges, it also opens up new opportunities to reassess that which has been researched and written. This is one of the motivating factors for this book.
Another motivating factor is the need that I have seen during my time as a public school art educator and professor of art education in higher education. When discussing the topic of digital technology, there are many resources that attend to practical matters, such as: How can I use layers in Photoshop? What is the best resolution for videos that are posted to YouTube? What do I do if my 3D printer does not 3D print? I have asked these questions myself, and have found the answers on the internet. The internet has become an amazing repository for information on digital media, not to mention traditional media. There are also quite a few excellent references that address the theoretical aspects of digital media. These are often written from the fields of media studies, philosophy, and cultural studies. In addition, there are a number of texts that address digital technologies in a number of educational fields. These frame aspects of the digital as instructional technologies. Theories that concern the digital in art education often derive from this last field, although you can find those that are influenced by the previously-mentioned fields as well.
There is a need for research that draws together these two types of resources: the practical and the theoretical, and that does so in a manner that does not alienate or obfuscate. I see my current research as doing just this. As I have been able to reflect upon my previous research writings in the field of art education, I have seen where they have successfully drawn together theory and practice, which has always been my goal. I also now see where my writings have missed the mark, either by weighing too heavily on one approach or the other. This book project tries to strike this balance, by writing primarily for the K-12 practitioner, the pre-service art education professor in higher education, and the media arts student.
My goal is to speak to the unique qualities of digital visual culture in this book. These qualities – temporality, theory and practice, and multilinearity – are not unique to digital visual culture. However, they are more common to this field of study than to visual culture in general, primarily due to the nature of digital media. I am not interested in arresting the dynamic aspects of digital media, isolating them and immobilizing them in order to study them. I am more interested in surveying them as they currently operate, looking to the influences that have brought them to where they now are, and speculating as to where they might lead. These motivations, when taken as a whole, speak less to the general contours of a digital visual culture, and more to the study of digital visual culture. As such, I am calling this book, and the approaches contained within, Digital Visual Studies.
