Mara-Johanna Kölmel

Mara-Johanna Kölmel explores the profound impact of digital technologies on the field of sculpture since the 1950s. When artists create their works using AI, custom software, or prototyping technologies, how should we be rethinking the concept of sculpture? Through the works of Morehshin Allahyari, Alice Channer, and Sterling Crispin, as well as an inter-generational group of artists, she examines how plasticity, corporeality, and monumentality have been transformed by the digital. Introducing concepts such as more-than-human corporeality, digital plasticity, and nomadic monumentality, the book encourages a re-evaluation of the sculptural. Systematically and transhistorically, the author connects research perspectives on sculpture and digital media, highlighting how the understanding of the sculptural has evolved into the (post-)digital age.

Reflections at the Intersection of Corporeality, Plasticity and Monumentality

Sculpture in the Augmented Sphere

Ursula Ströbele

Digital technologies have profoundly impacted the arts and expanded the field of sculpture since the 1950s. Art history, however, continues to pay little attention to sculptural works that are conceived and ‘materialized’ using digital technologies. How can we rethink the artistic medium in relation to our technological present and its historical precursors? A number of theoretical approaches discuss the implications of the so-called ‘Aesthetics of the Digital’, referring, above all, to screen-based phenomena. For the first time, this publication brings together international and trans-historical research perspectives to explore how digital technologies re-configure the understanding of sculpture and the sculptural leading into the (post-)digital age. Up-to-date research on digital technologies’ expansion of the concept of sculpture Linking historical sculptural debates with discourse on the new media and (post-)digital culture

The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Age

Sarah Hegenbart

What is the relevance of Dada and its artistic strategies in our current moment, one marked by post-truth politics, information floods and big data? How can contemporary art highlight the neglected nuances of cultural representation in the present day? While it may feel like we are living in a period of anomaly with the rise of the alt-right, this book shows how the Dada movement's artistic response to the aggressive nationalism and fascism of its time offers a fruitful analogy to our contemporary era. Dada's counter-cultural strategies, such as the distortion of reality and attacks on elites and rationality, have long been endorsed by artistic avantgardes and subcultures. Dada Data details how modern-day movements have appropriated such tactics in their ways of addressing the public both on- and offline. Bringing together contributions from interdisciplinary scholars, curators and artists working in global contexts that explore an array of artistic modes of persuasion and resistance, the book demonstrates how contemporary art can bring out neglected nuances of our post-truth moment. In linking the Dada movement's counter-cultural activities to modern phenomena such as post-internet art, information floods and big data mining, the book collates original propaganda with diverse artwork from such figures as Hannah Höch, Paula Rego, Tschabalala Self, Sheida Soleimani and South African artists donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere. In doing so, Dada Data brings together a rich scrapbook of Dada resources and perspectives that are highly relevant to present-day political concerns. With artistic contributions by IOCOSE, donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Montage Mädels.

Mara-Johanna Kölmel

Books

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