[spectre] CFP: The digital perspective (Koeln)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: prometheus-bildarchiv <info at prometheus-bildarchiv.de>
Date: Mar 30, 2011
Subject: CFP: Die digitale Perspektive - eine schoene Aussicht? (Koeln)

Universität zu Köln, Kunsthistorisches Institut, November 4-05, 2011
Deadline: May 8, 2011


The digital perspective - bright prospects?
connecting - locating - transforming - anchoring

CALL FOR PAPERS

prometheus - The Distributed Digital Image Archive for Research &
Education in 2011 celebrates its 10th anniversary: 10 years of
advancement of the "network society" as well as rapid expansion of
ground breaking developments in the study of visual culture. The
prometheus anniversary conference does not intend to look back but seeks
to provide a critical assessment of what happens now and might take
place in the not so distant future. What are the perspectives for
research and study in classical archaeology, art history and visual
culture - now that we are able to technically connect image and text, to
use location based services and 3D technologies? How are these
possibilities to be critically examined and methodologically grounded?

CONNECTING
10 years prometheus also means 10 years of connecting heterogeneous data
from diverse domains of cultural history. The "hyperlink paradigm" of
networking has been getting 'a bit long in the tooth'. Semantic Web
technologies and ontology-based presentations of knowledge offer fully
developed tools for the combination and automated query of stored data.
Via "crowd-sourcing" the professional community accesses the collective
knowledge of so-called laypersons. Which innovative technical solutions
are nowadays available to connect textual and visual representations of
artefacts? What kind of challenges do they pose to the community of
professionals?

LOCATING
Due to the technical development of mobile phones to become multi
functional devices (smartphones), entirely new forms of localization
arise for the arts and museums. Integrated positioning systems (GPS) and
motion sensors enable topographically accurate guidance. A camera
combined with functions such as a compass and object recognition
virtually adds visual surfaces and offers additional information on the
real environment (Augmented Reality).
Archaeological discoveries, architectures and artefacts always have
their place, which, however, can change or be modified. Accordingly, the
new technologies can help to combine topographic or spatial data with
other scientific information on a particular object or architectural
structure. We investigate new models and visions that connect location
and information. What kind of benefits can be expected to open up what
kind of venues for research and commerce likewise? Will there be new
modes of perception? What ways of mediation and distribution are
necessary to that end?

TRANSFORMING
This year's CeBIT estimated the next generation of the Internet to be
three-dimensional and to penetrate our reality. The advent of 3D
technologies in art and museums seems to prove the judgement: virtual
spaces (Photosynth, Google Street View) and museum tours, 3D animations
and high resolution giga-pixel images of artworks (Google Art Project)
as well as 3D documentaries seem to make the experience of originals
obsolete. Furthermore, high resolution and high graphic quality can
simulate a spatial context and material consistence of the object which
in part cannot be experienced in direct confrontation with the original
artefact.
What kind of developments and application scenarios can be imagined for
teaching and research in the universities as well as in the museums? And
what challenges are connected therewith? How does our perception of the
artwork change when the screen delivers more information than an
inspection of the original work can ever do, i.e. when virtual reality
beats actual reality?

ANCHORING
The emergence of digital image archives and the production of digital
tools for handling the images go hand in hand with the transformation of
art history and classical archaeology into an increasingly
differentiated study of visual culture. What is to be gained and lost
from this - theoretically, aesthetically, didactically, and in the realm
of conservation? What are the consequences, if our contact with the
original work of art, with its materiality and spatial environment etc.
becomes less and less every day? How much of this can be compensated by
technological innovations, e.g. by automated CONNECTIONS of image and
text, by ALLOCATING site-specific services or by virtual museum tours
(TRANSFORMING)? Whose benefit could that be for and to whose
disadvantage? To what extent can new technologies confirm and intensify,
influence and modify, encumber and disturb conventional ways of
research, teaching and learning in art history and archaeology? Are they
really able to raise the (professional and/or lay) contact with the
artwork to a new level of experience and reflection? What expectations
may we have of a technique which develops also (or even primarily?)
according to what is technically viable? Are there possibilities for
refusal, and can refusal be reasonable? Is progress euphoria still up to
date at all?

Please forward your abstract (max. 2 pages, max. 4,000 characters)
electronically via EasyChair until 8 May, 2011:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=prometheus20110
or submit it to lisa.dieckmann at uni-koeln.de.

Further information: http://prometheus-bildarchiv.de/tagung2011

Conference committee:
Dr. Stefan Brenne (Medienpädagogik, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen),
Lisa Dieckmann M.A. (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Universität zu Köln),
PD Dr. Norbert Eschbach (Klassische Archäologie,
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), Prof. Dr. Dorothee Haffner
(Museumskunde, HTW Berlin), Dr. Bettina Pfleging (Medienpädagogik,
ILIKE), PD Dr. Sigrid Ruby (Institut für Kunstgeschichte,
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), Sabine Scheele M.A.
(Koordinationsstelle Multimedia, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), PD
Dr. Holger Simon (pausanio GmbH & Co. KG), Dr. Ute Verstegen
(Christliche Archäologie, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Die digitale Perspektive - eine schöne Aussicht? (Köln). In:
H-ArtHist, Mar 30, 2011. <http://arthist.net/archive/1134>.

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