Sight as Site in the Digital Age

This volume presents a broad coverage of theoretical issues that deal with digital culture, representation and ideology in art and museums, and other cultural sites, offering new insights into issues of representation in the digitization of art. It critically examines the roles of museum and archives in the digital age and reexamines the intricate relations between sight and site in art, museums, exhibitions, theme parks, theatre performances, music videos, and films. The collection represents a multidisciplinary approach to the complex issues underlying the advent of technologies and digital culture. The rise of visual culture since the twentieth century can be accounted for by the advent of technology in film, TV, museum exhibitions, and the wide use of websites, but it can also be understood as a paradigmatic shift toward representation as a visual means to interpret culture, with new understandings of the site-sight dilemma and the co-implications in related tensions. Complicating the issue of representation is the rise of digital culture, as digital sites replace actual physical sites. This book explores how the virtual has replaced the actual, and in what ways, and to what effects, the digital has displaced the physical. With contributions by museum curators, communications scholars, visual artists, theatre artists, filmmakers, literary critics, and historians, this volume is of appeal to academics and graduate students in information science, art, media, performance, literary and cultural studies, and history.

 “The book binds together different concepts such as site, sight and digitalization in a very original way. It convincingly gathers contributions from academics and practitioners, artists and museum specialists. The chapters are theoretically well-founded, show an interesting breadth of content and are also dealing with current developments.”

— Monika Gänssbauer, Professor of Chinese and Head of the Institute of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden

“The chapters raise important and latest questions and discussions on the impact of digital technology has on art, culture, creativity, representation and innovation. They are original in dealing with latest examples in recent years, especially during the pandemic, with reflections and philosophical discussions on the transformation digital culture undergoes in relation to human and posthuman contexts, with examinations of art works, archives and museum collections, exhibitions, theme parks, theatre performances, films and music videos that encompass cultures from ancient to contemporary, from the West to the East, and from physical to digital.”

— Jack Leong, Associate Dean of Research and Open Scholarship, York University Libraries, Toronto, Canada