25 Years of Curating Digital Art: 1993–2018

Cutting Edge of the Contemporary: KNUST, Accra, and the Ghanaian Contemporary Art Movement

Digital art is increasingly becoming engaged with contemporary art. Artists began using programming and technology to create art in the 1950s and 1960s and the revolutionary advances in digital technology have spawned new approaches to making art. Originally viewed as outsider art, digital art gained international recognition in the late 1960s and again at the turn of the century. Traditional art institutions were not as quick to embrace this creative use of technology as artists did. In the 1970s, several international organizations were created to support this art form and remain active today. Exhibitions during this period were both juried and curated. During the 1970s and 1980s, there were very few digital art curators. The change occurred during the late 1990s when museums began to take notice of and exhibit digital art. The Internet has enabled artist, scholar and art institutional websites and the establishment of extensive archives of this art form. This online presence is contributing to the integration of digital art with contemporary art. Publishers have also followed suit and there is now a good selection of books on the theory, history and practice of digital art, led by the MIT Press, Thames & Hudson, and others. As digital art continues to merge with contemporary art, the division between the two will continue to lessen. However, what is important is to rectify the art historical record to give digital art the rightful place it has earned in the contemporary art landscape.

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between high school students' attitudes towards contemporary and digital art, and virtual exhibitions in terms of several variables. The research employed the "Survey Model," one of the quantitative research methods, and the "Comparative Correlational Survey Model" as its basis. The research sample consisted of 350 high school students enrolled in private and public high schools in a provincial center, selected through simple random sampling. Research data were collected online using the Attitude Scale Towards Virtual Exhibitions, the Attitude Scale Towards Contemporary Arts, and the Attitude Scale Towards Digital Art. Independent Samples t-Test, One-Way ANOVA, and Scheffe Tests were used in data analysis. The research results revealed that the students' general attitudes towards these areas were positive and high-level. While positive perceptions towards digital arts and the educational role of virtual exhibitions were particularly prominent, attitudes towards the virtual exhibition experience dimension were found to be relatively lower compared to other dimensions. Female students' attitudes toward various aspects of contemporary art, digital art, and virtual exhibitions are significantly more positive than male students. Regarding grade level, upper-grade students have higher attitude scores on the variables "contemporary art attitudes," "the educational role of virtual exhibitions," and "virtual exhibition experience." Students' attitudes toward contemporary and digital arts significantly and positively predict their attitudes toward virtual exhibitions; these variables explain approximately 20% of attitudes toward virtual exhibitions. Therefore, art educators are encouraged to focus on content that enhances students' experiences with digital art and virtual exhibitions. Education policymakers are advised to develop contemporary curricula that include digital art tools and to adopt inclusive arts education policies. Researchers are encouraged to conduct studies that further examine the effects of virtual exhibition experiences on student achievement, motivation, and creativity.

Sometime in 1975, I walked into the office of Arnold Rubin (1937–1988), an associate professor in the department of art at the University of California, Los Angeles, inquiring about graduate study in Africanist art history. Students of African art, he assured me, would be at the forefront of mighty changes in the academic world. He promised that we would blow the dust off the hidebound field of art history. Rather shaken by his passionate rhetoric, I left thinking I might be too conventional for such an avant-garde enterprise. So after a much more pragmatic conversation with Herbert M. ("Skip") Cole about the shrinking number of teaching positions in art history, I headed to the University of California, Santa Barbara, for my graduate work. There I was plunged into a program of instruction and research that was full of its own unexpected adventures and rewards. While I have always been immensely grateful that Skip Cole agreed to be my advisor and guide, I have never forgotten Rubin's vision, his assertion that Africanist art historians would overturn entrenched paradigms and revolutionize the study of art.This issue of African Arts celebrates a generation of scholars—the elders of our discipline—whose contributions shaped the journal when it was launched as african arts/arts d'afrique some fifty years ago. Arnold Rubin was one of these, as he had been appointed editor of "graphic and plastic arts" when the second issue of the fledgling magazine appeared in 1968. As a member of his students' generation, the cohort charged with bringing the study of African art into the twenty-first century, I would like to revisit my initial encounter with this influential scholar and teacher through the lens of African Arts. Has his vision indeed become a reality? Have Africanists reshaped the narrative of art history over the last fifty years and brought novel, interdisciplinary, Africa-centered approaches to a staid Eurocentric discipline?Clearly, I encountered Arnold Rubin during a time when his own views had been shaped by the theoretical and methodological debates swirling around the art department at UCLA, and by his awareness of the new and rather tenuous position of Africanists within the discipline of art history. After all, in the United States the first dissertation on an African topic presented for a PhD in art history (rather than anthropology or Egyptology) had been written less than twenty years earlier, in 1957, by Roy Sieber (1923–2001). While art historians such as Douglas Fraser (1930–1982) may have taught courses on African art as "Primitive Art" during the 1950s, it was not until the 1960s that Africanist scholars such as Sieber and Frank Willett (1925–2006) could draw on their own fieldwork when they offered classes in American art history departments. Rubin presented his thoughts on the development of the field at a conference on "African Art Studies in the 1980s" held at UCLA in 1979 and reviewed for African Arts by Marla Berns:1Although his ideas were disseminated in the classroom as well as through his many creative research projects, it is Rubin's association with African Arts in the first decade of its publication that allows us to examine how his goals for Africanist art history intersected with other impulses during a unique period. Fifty years ago, personal and professional relationships linking Americans and Africans promised to forge new ways of seeing and describing the world, and the excitement of this promise permeated the journal. I should note here that my own memories of that time were recently refreshed by a visit to an African country I had not seen in almost half a century. My brother arranged for me to join childhood friends and family members for a visit to Malawi, where our fathers had worked from 1964–1969, and where our mothers had volunteered in local colleges and hospitals. The church we had attended, constructed by members of the Church of Scotland congregation before 1891 (Briggs 2013:206), was still a vibrant place of worship in Blantyre (Fig. 1), its physical structure intact. I had only vague memories of an even earlier precolonial monument, the Mandala House, which had been the headquarters of the African Lakes Corporation in 1882 (Fig. 2). The interior is now a bright, sunny space managed by La Caverna, an art gallery specializing in paintings by Malawi's most influential modernists, while the upper floor houses the library and meeting rooms of the Malawi Historical Society. This venerable building thus enshrines the art history as well as the history of twentieth and twenty-first century Malawi, both pivoting around the nation's independence in 1964.Flipping through the first few years of african arts/arts d'afrique, the bilingual precursor of African Arts, also brought me back to the heady days of the 1960s. Just as my father and his American colleagues set up a technical college as a "contribution from the people of the United States of America to the people of Malawi" when that nation became independent from Britain,2 the very first issue proclaimed, in boldface print, that "The African Studies Center of the University of California Los Angeles presents a gift [of the magazine] to Africa." Since the journal and the technical school were offered to Africans at the height of the Cold War, when the continent and its resources were seen as vulnerable to influences from the Soviet Union, postcolonial theorists might characterize both as instruments wielded by the US government to ensure the loyalty of African allies.3 It was true that my father had been hired through an American university with funding from the Agency for International Development, while the growth of the African Studies Center at UCLA was nurtured by government grants and fellowships. Faculty and graduate students at UCLA were provided with funds for research on the African continent, allowing the African Studies Center to act as a "think tank" that was continually renewed by contacts with Africa. Former Peace Corps volunteers, sent by the US government to promote democracy and economic progress in Africa, enrolled in graduate programs after returning home, joining the ranks of scholars who studied the arts of the African continent. Yet despite their origins in hegemonic political policies, educational programs and initiatives such as african arts/arts d'afrique fostered a discourse that exposed Americans to African ways of knowing, to epistemologies which would lead researchers such as Arnold Rubin to challenge the assumptions of his own academic traditions.In the second issue, the editors wrote that the purpose of the new journal would be "to record the art of the African past, to provide an outlet for the contemporary African artist, and to stimulate the creative arts in Africa" (Povey 1967:2). Judging from other short entries, the publication was a highly experimental enterprise. According to a later reflection written by John Povey (1929–1992), the specialist in African literature who was one of its original editors, "the entire original concept of African Arts derived from a purely serendipitous seat proximity on an airline which brought Paul [law professor Paul Proehl (1921–1997)] and [Sudanese artist] el Salahi together. They communed and agreed that what was really wanted was a magazine that would display the manifold arts of Africa—hence the plural title—to the world" (1991:6).4Arnold Rubin had joined the editorial board quite soon after his arrival at UCLA. He was almost immediately joined by Skip Cole and by Eugene Grigsby, a professor of African and African American art history at Arizona State University. Other editors worked with them to assemble material celebrating a broad spectrum of African creativity. The first issues featured short essays on architecture, dance, theater, the cinema, music, literary criticism, and oral literature, in addition to an overview of the archaeology of Ife by Frank Willett, a reflective piece by Léopold Sédar Senghor, and reviews of contemporary art. Some of the discussions in these first volumes, such as a long essay by Bohumil Holas, were deeply primitivist, and John Povey himself could give way to paternalist pronouncements: "Somewhere between the inhibiting forms of the tradition and the too facile fashionable fads of contemporary art in the West, rests the legitimate area in which the African artist can create" (1968a:1). Yet in these years Dennis Duerden stated, "I am looking for an African kinetic artist, or one who uses a computer" (1967:30). Too few contributors would join him in expecting African artists of the 1970s and 1980s to engage with developments happening elsewhere in the world of contemporary art, and apparently neither video artists not digital arts would appear in the pages of African Arts prior to the twenty-first century. John Povey himself was startlingly prescient when he humbly acknowledged that "We hope that the possibilities supplied by the presence of this forum will encourage Africans to write their own account of their arts. Such essays will undoubtedly reveal to us areas of perception which are inevitably denied even to the most sympathetic of outside critics" (1968b:1). Unfortunately, the "presence" of the journal would diminish in African libraries and art centers during the following decades (Nettleton 2017, Okwuoso 2017), and as Simbao has clearly demonstrated (2017), scholars based on the African continent would be hindered from publishing their research in the journal by a variety of constraints. It is now clear that the laudable sentiments of Povey needed to have been accompanied by sustained action.Soon after its inception, the editors announced an annual competition, with monetary prizes for winning submissions of art (two- and three-dimensional work) and literature (plays, poetry, short stories, excerpts from novels) that would be published or reproduced in the magazine. Each issue would include reports by African "correspondents" providing "perceptive analyses of the underlying situation that confronts the African artist" (Povey 1968b:1). As a showcase for African literature, african arts/arts d'afrique was bilingual, offering essays in French and English. At the time, this was a sophisticated, European approach that addressed a wide, intercontinental readership, even if the possible incorporation of other languages commonly used in Africa (such as Arabic, Portuguese, or Swahili) was not mentioned. In many ways the magazine resembled creative modernist publication projects such as Minotaure, produced in Paris in the 1930s, or Black Orpheus, published in Ibadan after the 1950s, or Transition, launched in Kampala in the 1960s. What is striking, however, was the offer by the editors of african arts/arts d'afrique to distribute their color illustrations of African contemporary art to schools so that teachers could mount them on bulletin boards (Povey 1968a:38). This was a didactic effort to reach out to the American public, a program to dispel misconceptions about African cultures. In today's global art world, where critics value the transgressive, provocative stance of marginalized artists, few curators would attempt to place reproductions of contemporary African art in K-12 classrooms of the United States.As Doran Ross noted in his review of the first twenty-five years of African Arts (Ross 1992:1), submissions of literary works and coverage of contemporary art faded away after the annual competitions came to an end in 1975. Just as Arnold Rubin brought his experience with performance, ephemeral art, and ritual in African contexts to his exploration of American cultural practices, African Arts covered a broad range of urban and rural artistic creativity in Africa and its Diaspora during the 1980s. It became a leading outlet for fresh, new accounts of artists' practice based on fieldwork conducted in communities throughout Western and Central Africa, and studies of arts from Eastern and Southern Africa were featured as well. Given the variety and sophistication of the new studies appearing in African Arts, its readers may not have noticed how few contributors were still visiting the studios of artists working in African galleries, cultural centers, and institutions of higher education. In a "First Word" written as African Arts approached its twenty-fifth anniversary, Povey complained that at the 1989 Triennial conference of ACASA, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, "contemporary African art … was considered at best marginal, at worst a regrettable intrusion of a tiresome product outside the concerns of serious scholars" (1990:1). Other journals would eventually arise to cover arts identified as "contemporary," such as Revue Noire (in 1991) and Nka (in 1994), and in last decade of the twentieth century African Arts itself would once again turn its attention to artists who had studied in African universities or art institutes. I would argue, though, that by neglecting critical studies of these African artists during the 1980s, Africanists missed the opportunity to interact with art historians in other "non-Western" fields, who were extending their own research methods into the study of modern and contemporary "global" arts (Sullivan 1996, Farago and Pierce 2006, Hay 2008).Furthermore, because African Arts focused on community-based (rather than nationally based) art and architecture during the 1980s, it bypassed a pivotal period in the history of African modernisms. During my visit to Malawi, I was honored to meet Willie Nampeya, now professor emeritus in the art department at Chancellor College in Zomba, who had been a student of my mother, Barbara Blackmun (Fig. 3). After learning of the challenges faced by Prof. Nampeya and his younger colleagues, and realizing that they have worked for many years in relative isolation, I wish that I (and other faculty in American institutions) had been more aware of their need for international recognition and support (see Simbao 2017:6). Whatever the reasons, close contacts between art educators working in Africa and in the United States still tend to be the exception rather than the rule.The switch to a monolingual format in volume 4 (and the adoption of the name African Arts) may have contributed to the diminishing number of articles on modernist cinema, literature, and theater appearing in the journal. One immediate casualty was the coverage of francophone northern Africa. During the first few years, contributors had written about artists based in Tunis and Cairo, providing material that is useful now for researchers reviewing the history of African modernism. The original inclusion of arts from the entire continent had reflected political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, when newly independent African states sponsored arts festivals in Dakar, Algiers, and Lagos that were expressions of African solidarity. Of course biennials and other exhibition events today return to this model by soliciting artworks from across the continent, weaving economic and political networks as part of national cultural policies. And of course many art fairs are sponsored by francophone African nations and produce bilingual texts.The early articles on textiles, ceramics, and other artisanal traditions in the Maghreb were also responses to the work of historians and archaeologists, who were then mapping trade routes and the movements of people and ideas across the Sahara. But in the 1960s, art historians had often been introduced to African art by European modernists, who believed that only sub-Saharan Africa could produce art nègre, authentically "primitive" art. Even after abandoning the tenets of Primitivism, many art historians remained in thrall to the masterpieces of West Africa and Central Africa that had inspired early twentieth century French painters. It is not surprising that the pages of African Arts would be dominated by these regions, even though Africanists such as Rubin and Cole had moved far beyond formal analyses of sculpture to broader understandings of the totality of creative production on the continent in its very first issues.Perhaps the shift away from Egypt and the Maghreb was also a result of the critiques of the field of African Studies in the 1970s, when African Americans affirmed their own ancestral links to ancient cultures. Following the lead of Robert Farris Thompson, many Africanists extended their art historical analyses to the Americas, narrating art histories as creative expressions of the Black Atlantic world. As African Studies in several institutions was subsumed under "Black Studies" or appended to departments of African American and Africana Studies, the art historical relationships between West Africans classified as "black" and North Africans seen as "non-black" by outside observers became more difficult to place within an American academic framework. When Sidney Kasfir reviewed Jan Vansina's Art and History in Africa for African Arts, she underscored his inclusion of arts from the northern half of the continent, asserting that this was perhaps "the most alien part of the author's perspective for African art specialists" (Kasfir 1986:12).For the first decade or so, the journal had close relationship with commercial enterprises. In addition to receiving funding from the Kress Foundation to print images in color, african arts/arts d'afrique received advertising revenue from airlines, a mining company, and the Franklin Gallery in Los Angeles. Private collections as well as exhibitions at public institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum were reviewed. This context helps explain why Rubin wrote his influential essay "Accumulative Sculpture: Power and Display" (Rubin 1974) for the Pace Gallery in New York City before publishing it in the contemporary art journal Art Forum (Rubin 1975). It would be several years before a messy divorce would separate private galleries selling "primitive arts" (or "tribal arts") and the academic world. This divorce was finalized as postcolonial theory pushed art historians (and the editors of African Arts) towards new discussions of professional ethics, fieldwork methods, and collection practices.Arnold Rubin may have been instrumental in moving african arts/arts d'afrique in a direction that was quite different from that originally envisioned by Povey and Poehl. His own, detailed study of Kutep mud sculpture in the first volume contained the publication's first endnotes (Rubin 1968). For its second volume, the magazine featured an extended study of Chokwe arts by Marie-Louise Bastin that spanned three issues and whose overview from the of most early Skip essays on appeared that as a new for critical of fieldwork Rubin's and a in on in the of the literature on and Robert Farris wrote his of African Arts was as a forum for research in the arts by art and other submissions were to as they would be at other journals (Ross Povey when from his editorial that despite its African Arts had became an academic publication in with the of a It could thus could more of a to the discipline of art how has this years ago, Doran Ross wrote a "First Word" in which he complained that "the arts of Africa to be in the world, the art the or the classroom … Even the most courses on African arts a at colleges and the Africanist who to have had the in the field of art history as a wrote in the vision of an to position and the of to the rather than the product of artistic to have been Yet by the of African art history more "African art … has collections and What might we in 2017, a decade are many ways to the of Africanist art historians within the American academic world, from positions of Africanists in art history programs or the number of courses we to the number of on African art published by university or the number of articles and reviews we have in the most The number of Africanists who art exhibitions as or curators might also be in addition to the many gallery art independent and whose academic to their in African art. Yet as faculty members at American college or university such might not us what we really wish to our in the art historical they not us much about or even we have had an the field as a I a the art history When Doran Ross and wrote their African artworks to art as of "primitive" Some African again in the on twentieth century European where they were by the of the where they had been of both of the leading for art history Art the by and Art include on African art that are with on or the The that will provide at to African in an in art history. of artworks from the African also in the of American school students need to for an Art History these on the work of Africanists to working in the on African art history, written almost in the by Skip Cole for Art the and and Roy for Art History have been for later in to provide student readers with a historical Povey might have of these which African art was of when the arts of other As several scholars have serious studies of historical developments in African art forms are few and far and the review was launched in part out of the with the of attention to historical context in African Arts and In many has not been on African artistic of the immediate or to such as (see But that may as art historians and other scholars new research and produce more For in Barbara Blackmun had very to draw when a in to for the family on the following (Fig. The was a But when agreed to for at a in (Fig. we could a literature on that the in historical perspective if the history of African art is in and classrooms so that Africa can become in of its inclusion offer students the opportunity to African artistic practices, and that provide them with new ways of looking and is "African its place in the that african arts/arts d'afrique as "graphic and plastic arts" in a collection of identified by artist, and in the today's African artists can be in such as Art which them into the discourse of global modern and contemporary art and on the of are we Arnold Rubin's of as art within a cultural And if we write articles in Art that showcase African studies of art historical are we to Arnold Rubin's vision of Africanist art history as recently wrote that he Rubin would be to that contributors to African Arts still hope to the discipline of art history, even if we are of how this can be

While early experiments in digital and technological art began in the 1960s, degree programs that focused on it did not emerge until the 1980s. Most digital art pioneers were self-taught and created their work at research centers and universities. Emerging digital artists were primarily fine art students who supplemented their education with courses in computer science, graphics and programming. The first MFA in Computer Arts was established at the School of Visual Arts in 1986. The goal of the program was to provide an academic and studio environment in which artists would learn about the theory, history and practice of digital art. Several MFA degree programs followed and continue to be established. While museums were resistant to this type of art early on, international organizations and a small group of galleries embraced it. Museum curators who had experience and an interest in digital art were few and far between. As digital artists began to redefine the contemporary art landscape, museums and galleries began to take an interest in exhibiting this creative work. The development of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s radically changed both the museum and contemporary art world, and as well the education of artists. This chapter explores the parallel developments of digital art education; changes in how art is created, experienced and exhibited; new forms of contemporary art and the approaches modern curators are using to showcase this art.

In a broad sense, digital art is contemporary art using mass production or digital media methods. Data can be operated in various ways and stored in the database, and applied in various environments and various disciplines. Long distance information transmission technology has changed the way people participate in artistic activities. Art works begin to have not only interactive and non-material characteristics, but also break the limitations of time and space. The most prominent feature of digital interactive art is digital and interactive. Digital art works must fully or partially use digital technology in the implementation process. Digital art can be purely computer-generated, or draw images through mouse markers and drawing boards by scanning photos or using vector graphics software. This article is based on 3D digital interactive technology, using comparative analysis, document analysis and other methods to study the creative painting automatic design system, with a view to perfecting the structure of the creative painting automatic design system, improving the level of artistic design, and designing more creative and meaningful designs. Digital painting works. The thesis first sorts out the application status of 3D digital interactive technology in the field of contemporary art, then compares the similarities and differences between traditional art works and 3D digital interactive technology artworks, emphasizes the multi-dimensional interactive logic of 3D digital interactive technology art works, and then analyzes 3D digital The main morphological characteristics of interactive art make a reasonable argument for the realization of complementary advantages after the automatic design system of creative painting is integrated into 3D digital interactive art.

Abstract: Rereading first-hand texts on contemporary Iranian art and identifying the type of logical connection between contemporary art and thought in Iran can; To be considered as a key issue in the evaluation of contemporary Iranian culture and art. Simultaneously with the decline of the authority of traditional art and the rise of Western art in Iran, this art was not able to communicate with the Iranian audience as traditional art did. From this date on, a dilemma arose in Iranian art, more commonly referred to as the and then tried a part of contemporary thought in Iran; To evaluate this crisis of identity and separation between society and contemporary art based on its identity-oriented perspective. Perhaps it can be expressed as follows; Identity is a set of individual or group characteristics and cultural, psychological, philosophical, biological and historical characteristics. Which signifies unity or similarity; and distinguishes a particular person or community from other individuals or groups in a specific time and place. In this study, in order to compare the viewpoints of Jalal Al Ahmad and Dariush Shayegan on Iranian contemporary art, the process of how Iranian intellectuals are treated in a concise way has first been studied, and then, Jalal Al-Ahmad and Dariush Shayegan's views on the Iranian contemporary art are considered separately. These views are directly influenced by their approach to the issue of identity and their analysis and interpretation of the kind of exposure of Iranians to the new world. Mostly dispersed in articles and cases have been published. Through these articles one can, from one hand, explore and identify the genre of his thinking about the type of contemporary art and contemporary world in the cultural and social layers of Iran. On the other hand, he has found some kind of connection between some contemporary artists and contemporary scholars, in order to finally identify the intellectual roots of Jalal Al-Ahmad and Dariush Shayegan, with an emphasis on their type of approach, and the influence of these roots in the formation his readings that led to the writing of articles in the field of theoretical studies of contemporary Iranian art, and the approach of the thought of these two thinkers about the Iranian contemporary art and the impact of these approaches on their writings in this case. According to the studies presented in this study, the thinking of Jalal Al-Ahmad and Dariush Shayegan on the subject of identity thinking has been formed, which can be clearly traced to the common roots of the formation of these ideas in Fardidiyeh meetings held at the house of Amir Hossein Jahanbegloo . Tracked. This kind of identity thinking pays more attention to dimensions and axes such as Iranian ness, Islamism and modernity in analyzing and interpreting the socio-cultural actions of contemporary Iran and evaluates them from this perspective. However, the type of approach of these thinkers in analyzing and interpreting issues and consequently their orientation towards issues such as Iranianism, Islamism and modernity is different. Iranian ness has a key impact on the identity of Jalal Al-Ahmad and his views on contemporary Iranian art and the issue of nationalism and the search for Iranian behavior and the emphasis on self-improvement or localization of imported concepts is an issue that leads us to call Al-Ahmad's identity thinking here native's identity, because it tries to extend the culture and To keep the rich Iranian art in its national context and to maintain its independent expression in the global dialogue, an expression which, in his interpretation, is either not exotic or just as new and different for the exotic Iranian audience; For non-Iranian audiences. Al-Ahmad began writing about contemporary Iranian art in the second period of his life, the period of separation from religion; But in the third period of life and the period of conversion, it has continued This religious approach is quite evident in the writings of this period. In contrast, Dariush Shaygan's writings on contemporary Iranian art are more expressive of his identity-oriented view in the third period of his thought. This identity-oriented view that tends to explain the intermediate spaces in different cultural and social layers by using the term mobile identity and forty pieces. It tries to introduce identity in a dynamic and fluid form and not rigid and static. An identity in which the concept of originality has different definitions than in the past, including the 1940s and the ideas of Jalal al-Ahmad.In other words, Shaygan considers Iranianism, Islam and modernity as intertwined and intertwined, and considers their relationship in contemporary socio-cultural issues as complex and inseparable in many respects. Therefore, here we call Shaygan identity thinking thinking a planetary identity thinking.

Purpose. To serve as a reference for the evolution of the online digital art display industry, as well as to conduct further studies in the field of digital entertainment art in the showcase design business in order to give solid evidentiary assurances, this article presents a virtual reality which is a technology reality-based digital media art exhibition design with the goal of examining the new construction trend of online media art with in context of existing period and the use of sophisticated technology. Implications. This paper enriches the theory, skills, and means of digital cultural communication, opens up a broader space and vision for digital media art communication, enriches the communication skills and means of digital media, and provides flexible and efficient ideas and methods for the dissemination of digital media art, which is of practical significance for realizing the active and effective dissemination of digital media art. Methodology. The method of this paper is to use the digital three-dimensional panorama technology of virtual reality to explore the digital media art display and digital media art expression form of augmented reality. The role of these methods is to solve the problem of spatial positioning of virtual 3D objects in real scenes and to judge the final detection model, the problem of model making to satisfy AR computing power, and the problem of scene interaction. Research Findings. Through a mix of digital content artwork and virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, this research examines the impact of AR and VR in digital art and analyzes and summarizes a series of design strategies for digital media art display projects. The results show that people are 33.6% more satisfied with VR and AR displays than traditional displays.

As a new art form of a new world that technology has changed and transformed, new media art and other forms of creation associated with it have different stages of development in different countries. Questions such as the development of this form in Turkish art, the visibility of the artists working in this field in the international art field, what qualities the created works have and what stages they have passed through to capture the current digital identity (aesthetics) have not yet been fully clarified in the literature. In this context, the research takes an important role in filling the gap in the literature by chronologically addressing this change process in Turkish art and analyzing the progress of new media art from past to present. In accordance with this purpose; first of all, the relationship between modern art and contemporary art and the changing dimensions of cultural structure are examined. In this context, new media arts and digitalized art creations, which exist as a new form of contemporary/contemporary art, are included in the research through the development of the screen phenomenon and analyzed. In the continuation of the research, the development of new media in Turkey, the pioneering steps taken in this context, the first exhibitions, different creation mechanisms, collaborations in the formation process, alternatives for exhibition strategies are analyzed. Then, the development of new media and the process of change in institutions and institutional structures are discussed in two different aspects in terms of the exhibition process of the work and the creation process, and the collaborations of different disciplines in the creation process of digital art are examined with examples from the world and Turkey. The research, in which the foundations of the change between contemporary and modern art are analyzed through new media art and digitalized art creations, is a qualitative research using the relational analysis method and the analyzed works are included in the research with purposeful element sampling.

The purpose of the publication is to analyze the virtual and augmented reality in the work of Ukrainian artists of the last thirty years. The study digital visual art space is the analytical methods to determine internal trends and prospects of contemporary Ukrainian art. The main methodological approach is the cultural-semiotic analysis of the forms of manifestation of visualization of modern art culture. The application of a systematic approach allowed to study semiotic systems that contribute to the comprehensive disclosure of the problem of semantics of modern forms of visualization. The peculiarities of the use of technologies for the support and demonstration of works of art are revealed, the emphasis is on the emergence of new digital trends in contemporary art, thanks to which visual works function in their own media environment. Virtual and digital realities in the fine arts replace the artist's canvas, and the ironer allows him to immerse himself in other unreal worlds of the author's subconscious. Thus, from a simple fascination with technology, the modern generation of artists quickly moved to quality and content requirements, conceptuality and communication between the author, viewer and work of art, which requires artists to understand modern technology, traditional techniques of painting. The scientific novelty of the work is to identify the main characteristics of the development of modern visual arts with the help of virtual space in the Ukrainian cultural environment. The practical significance of the obtained results is that they can be used as a factual and theoretical basis for the creation of relevant sections in scientific and scientific-methodical publications on the history of contemporary Ukrainian art.

The Long View: Leadership at a Critical Juncture for “African Art” in America

The advent of the digital age has given new forms and new connotations to artistic creation, and more and more digital media technologies have entered the stage of artistic creation and exhibitions. At present, holographic projection technology has become a hot application technology in the field of digital media art. The purpose of this paper is to explore the technical principles of holographic projection technology and its application in the field of digital media art, so as to provide suggestions for the application and promotion of holographic projection technology and the development and innovation of digital media art. First of all, this article understands the technical principles of holographic projection and its application status in various fields, especially in the field of digital media art, through relevant literature research. Then, this article introduces the digital holographic technology, virtual imaging technology, and computer simulation technology used in the realization of holographic projection technology. Then, based on the advantages of holographic projection technology in three‐dimensional image recording and reproduction, this paper proposes to introduce holographic projection technology to digital art museums, digital art exhibitions, and other digital media art applications and to study the effect of holographic projection technology on art through simulation experiments, the effect of recording and reproducing the image of the work. Finally, the three‐dimensional reconstruction image of the digital holographic projection experiment on the artwork is compared with the simulated image of the Contour GT profiler to verify the feasibility of applying the holographic projection technology to art exhibitions and the effect of three‐dimensional image recording and reproduction. Research shows that the holographic projection technology can achieve 93.34% of the simulation effect of recording and reproducing 3D images of artworks. It is also found that 59.86% of the audience who pay attention to the art experience strongly support the application of holographic projection technology in digital media art fields such as digital art gallery. This fully proves the feasibility of applying holographic projection technology to digital art exhibitions and provides a full range of artistic experience for audiences who cannot be present.

By combining examples of contemporary toy art, illustration, device art, digital artistic practices and through views of my own I will question the significance and development of traditional art in contemporary art creation and its impact on the my art. The article consists of three parts: In the first chapter, I will emphasize the embodiment of Chinese traditional art in Dunhuang art through the Dunhuang example. I will analyze how Dunhuang Buddhist art was formed and describe the architectures, sculptures and murals in Dunhuang Grottoes. For the murals, I will focus on the figure murals and story murals. Finally I will summarize the characteristics of Dunhuang art and its impact on contemporary art. In Chapter II, I will analyze contemporary illustration art, toy art and device art through art works of artists such as Yoshitomo Nara and Maywa Denki from Japan, of contemporary China such as Perk studio from China, and Mars-1 from America. In Chapter III, I will introduce my own art works as well as my own artistic views. For artistic views, I will analyze the importance of traditional art in contemporary art, the importance of art innovation and the way to carry on traditional art and create contemporary art works. Finally, I will present my own thoughts through art creation and the conclusion for the art study.

This article examines the environmental implications of ubiquitous information and communication technologies (ICT) manufacturing, operations and usage, using the theories of new materialism and digital materialism, and offers an interactive video installation as a case study for contemporary digital art’s pedagogical potential in response to such environmental issues. Contrary to the imageries of the cloud and the notion of immateriality as promoted by the tech industry, digital media systems are grounded in the material world and operate at the expense of the material substrate. Such a sociopolitical landscape warrants an exploration of potential counter tactics in the fields of digital art and art education. Being informed by digital materialism and hinged on the notion that encounters with contemporary art can cultivate critical and different ways of knowing, this article proposes that a focus on the material can function as an antithesis to the abstracting act of information/data and its purported immateriality.

With the rapid development of the 21st-century technological revolution, digital interactive art has gradually manifested its cultural value and aesthetic significance globally. It specifically focuses on the research status and challenges faced by the Chinese academic community regarding the emotionalization of digital public art interaction experiences. Departing from both theoretical and practical dimensions, it elucidates the concept, foundational theories, and relevant research status of emotionalized interactive experiences. As the core of digital public art, emotionalized interaction aims to forge a closer emotional connection between artworks and audiences through digital media and technology, thereby enhancing the expressive power of artworks and the experiential satisfaction of audiences. The paper further identifies the challenges confronting current practices in the creation of digital art and proposes strategies and directions for enhancing emotionalized interactive experiences. Its objective is to promote the emotionalization level of Chinese digital public art, providing a foundation and direction for future development. Ultimately, it seeks to better cater to the aesthetic needs of audiences, foster the dissemination and development of digital art, and offer crucial theoretical support for the integration of Chinese digital art into the international arena.