This paper presents research on the current state of the field of digital art history. The author claims that digital art is preserved rather in format of database that of the monograph, from which several generalizing conclusions are drawn: a) The preference of database over narrative is an expression of the postmodern crisis of grand narratives; b) The database has become a cultural form of our time penetrating all kind of cultural fields, and formats, historiography included; c) The countercultural ethos of the field of digital art gravitates towards open, non-hierarchical format of database. In the second part of the paper, the examples of database-based historiographical projects in the field of digital art are listed and analyzed. Shared inspiration of these projects is recognized in methods complementary to database formats, which are developed within the field of digital humanities, such as distant reading, data visualizations, pattern recognition; as well as in AI Art projects addressing the status of history in the age of database.
Jana Horáková is Associate professor of new media art at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, where she oversees the study programmes Theory of Interactive Media (MA) and Digital Culture and Creative Industries (PhD). She specializes in local new media art history, robotic art, and innovative methodologies of new media art research, preservation, and mediation. She co-curated the virtual reconstruction of one of the very first computer graphic exhibitions Computer Graphic (The Brno House of Arts, 1968/2017, 2018). She led the interdisciplinary research project Media Art Live Archive, supported by the Technical Agency of the Czech Republic (No. TL02000270). She is currently the principal investigator of the new research project Local digital art and culture as a subject of historiographical research supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GA24-10667S).
