Sight as Site in the Digital Age: Art, the Museum, and Representation

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 20th 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.