Contemporary art and the digitization of everyday life

Abstract

"Digitization is the animating force of everyday life. Rather than defining it as a technology or a medium, Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life argues that digitization is a sociohistorical process that is contributing to the erosion of democracy and an increase in political inequality, specifically along racial, ethnic, and gender lines. Taking a historical approach, Janet Kraynak finds that the seeds of these developments are paradoxically related to the ideology of digital utopianism that emerged in the late 1960s with the rise of a social model of computing, a set of beliefs furthered by the neoliberal tech ideology in the 1990s, and the popularization of networked computing. The result of this ongoing cultural worldview, which dovetails with the principles of progressive artistic strategies of the past, is a critical blindness in art historical discourse that ultimately compromises art's historically important role in furthering radical democratic aims"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction : Digitization and anti-democracy : the perils of digital utopianism -- Network effects : networked centralities and political marginalization -- Collaboration and the hive mind : social networks and the gendering of the economy -- Therapeutic participation and the museological user : on the museum in the age of surveillance capitalism -- Modularity and the alterities of search : racialization, difference, and computational systems -- Audible pasts and imaginary futures : on silence and the technological imaginary -- In lieu of a conclusion.