Museums and digital era: preserving art through databases
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-02-2018-0002 |
| Pages | 89-93 |
| Date | 26 September 2019 |
| Published date | 26 September 2019 |
| Author | Luis D. Rivero Moreno |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Collection building & management |
Museums and digital era: preserving
art through databases
Luis D. Rivero Moreno
Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –Digital language has meant a revolution in the methods of production, distribution and conservation of contemporary art. The purpose of
this paper is to reflect on the new status of museums within the digital age. Works using new media must be understood as spaces of non-
hierarchical communication where an artist’s role is diluted and the public becomes a user that completes an open process. Therefore, the functio n
of the museum is challenged, being no longer a moral authority or a place of storing physical works. Because of its instabil ity and obsolescence, the
only valid method for the conservation of digital art is permanence through change.
Design/methodology/approach –This research contrasts the theoretical material emerged in the past years related to the characteristic of new
media to the practical work of conservation of digital pieces made by the new generation of museums and cultural centres. In addition, the fresh
material offered by the Web itself allows analyzing the virtual activity of the museums themselves and the new platforms (online labs, databases,
websites and blogs) arisen in the past decades. The latter are perfect examples of the new paths opened by the digital contemporary technology
offering collective sites of communication in real time.
Findings –The preservation of digital and intangible heritage is understood as a form of development of a collective memory that can help in the
understanding of our age in the future. In this way, the goals and the responsibilities are common; citizens are required to keep an active culture
that is no more a culture of the accumulation and concentration by a minority. In present context, there is a new possibility, maybe for the first time
in history, of achieving a new narrative really democratized and decentralized through the new ways of interacting and sharing information offers by
digital media.
Social implications –The urgency of getting an open and free access to information and technology is part of the idiosyncratic of digital art. There
is a real aim of generating alternative spaces of knowledge serving public interest, being apart from the economic and political interests of large
corporations. In this respect, the role of the museum will be controversial. First of all, as an institution originally created to impose power and moral
authority by the governments.
Originality/value –Museums remains as the main artistic institution nowadays. However, they are in a difficult position as a traditional space for
preserving and exhibiting art. That is why, they are adapting themselves to the new digital context helped by offering practical databases and
updated information on their collections via websites and social networks.
Keywords Internet, Museums, Digital art, New media art, Museology, Net.art
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Since the arrival of the first avant-garde movements and,
furthermore, the second wave of the avant-garde after the
Second World War, contemporary art was inclined to the
dematerialization of the works of art (Lippard,1973). This fact
will be finally achieved, first, with the development of
conceptual art,and second, with the arrival of a whole variety of
arts associated with new digital media. This tendency will
convert the works of art into an element, apparently, without
mass, volume or weight. In this manner, they will be easily
transportable and transmissible. However, and paradoxically,
exhibition and preservation of contemporary art is going to
appear as a task of not a simple resolution, theoretically and
physically.
The concept of open work, so-called by Umberto Eco
(1962), is going to be one of the clues for understanding the
development of contemporary art in the twentiethand twenty-
first centuries.Art, as a communicative event, is going to rise up
like an open process, not based anymore on the manufacturing
of a physical object. Only an active reception by the public can
give a final meaning to the artistproposal. Therefore, the piece
of art will become an ephemeral action reinterpreted by every
individualor as a collective experience.
The world of new media will make further progress by
questioning the authenticity and originality of the pieces. Art
loses any capacity of sublimation(Manovich, 2002). More than
ever before, works of art will be continuously reproduced,
copied and modified. The audience emancipates (Rancière,
2010), and it is going to be converted into an active user who
interacts and completes the process. After all, the main aim is
making art a non-hierarchal process of communication based
on a rizhomatic structure, the same that is drawn by the World
Wide Web. This “art of information”(Wilson, 2001)is
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Collection and Curation
38/4 (2019) 89–93
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 2514-9326]
[DOI 10.1108/CC-02-2018-0002]
Received 24 February 2018
Revised 24 February 2018
Accepted 22 July 2018
89
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