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"Dear Chat GPT, Give Us A Title!" Responsiveness and Responsibility in Times of AI

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of art-historical research and cultural discourse: from the creation of digital images with the use of transformer models, such as Dall-E and Midjourney, to the analysis of large data sets of images with the use of neural networks. Scholarly written analysis is also shifting with the use of ChatGPT and other language models. Now is a critical time for the field of Digital Art History to reflect and respond to the uses and applications of data with these computational methods. While AI inquiry offers many potential avenues for rethinking art historical research, without careful consideration algorithms also risk ethical pitfalls. Though there has been fervent discussion around AI tools intersecting with art production, as well as a long history of tool development for image recognition and analysis, this issue seeks to further the conversation in response to the recent influx of scholarly engagement with AI and art-historical scholarship.

The Digital Image - A Transdisciplinary Research Cluster

The Priority Program “The Digital Image,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), combines projects from a multiperspectival point of view and addresses the central role that the image plays in the process of the digitization of knowledge in theory and practice. The research cluster consists of 12 projects from various disciplines, including computer science, archaeology, European and Asian art history, media studies and ethnology. By placing the subject matter within a broader methodological and cultural horizon, the cluster aims to bridge possible gaps between different cultures.

In this special issue, all 12 projects introduce – in brief presentations – their goals and research questions. This provides an overview of the various approaches to, and research on, the overarching topic of the Digital Image. It serves as a starting point for further investigations and underlines the collective approach, bringing together researchers and disciplines. 

Zonas de Contacto: Art History in a Global Network?

Digital technologies have catalyzed globalization; yet, the precarity of global networks has become increasingly apparent in the face of pandemics and climate change. International collaboration often reveals deep disparities in access, infrastructure, and institutional resources. The profound (and sometimes disorienting) effect of automated computation on everyday life can only be properly understood within historical frameworks that articulate the interplay between technological mediation and the production of history. But this oft-repeated point begs the question: Who has the privilege to write these histories, and how? 

Horizons of Mixed Realities

The International Journal of Digital Art History (DAHJ) responds to cutting edge scholarship concerning extended reality technologies. Today, mixed reality is poised to be just as transformative as analog film and photography, which radically reorganized many domains of modern life (including communication, science, politics, and art). This potential has become increasingly apparent in the face of our current global pandemic, wherein virtual landscapes have begun to serve as critical contact zones for practitioners of social distancing. 

History of Digital Art

The International Journal for Digital Art History (DAHJ) researches the impact of new technologies on art history. It reflects upon the possibilities and opportunities of digital tools for art historical research. In contrast, the history of digital art deals with artistic practice and its continual engagement with computational media, as well as the Internet. However, both of these fields have been shaped by the interactions between art and information science. For this reason, the artistic engagement with these tools must be considered as a crucial vector within the expanded field of Digital Art History.

Transformation of Institutions

Digital Art History is often described as a methodological addition to Art History. Moreover, it includes a profound transformation of its institutional framework: server rooms replaced the slide libraries as the former center of art historical departments, museums are concerned with digitizing their collections and making them accessible via virtual exhibitions, and conservators facing challenges preserving digital art with its soft- and hardware.

The transition from analog to digital pictorial transcription has transformed art history and its archives in profound and unexpected ways. The objects of our study, once physically circumscribed by the walls of the slide library, are now widely available. The advent of image retrieval platforms like ArtStor and Google Image Search, not to mention countless museum databases, present new challenges and opportunities for cataloguing and visualizing data. The photographic practices of museum visitors have likewise been transformed by the integration of digital photography, cellular phones, and social media. Additionally, art historical publishing and pedagogy continue to be mostly constrained (in the English-speaking) world by antiquarian protocols governing copyright and image clearance.

Digital Space and Architecture

Art history is centrally concerned with a vast array of three-dimensional objects, such as sculptures, and spaces, such as architecture. Digital technologies allow the creation of virtual spaces, which in turn allow us to simulate and compare aspects of a visual culture’s three-dimensional timespace that cannot be communicated as a single, still image. The third issue, thus, focusses on the third dimension in art history, and the digital realm that continues to mediate and transform it.

Visualizing Big Image Data

Big Data and Big Image Data (BID) open up tantalizing new vistas to the art historian. BID as a sub-category or – better yet – an extension of Big Data affords the possibility of processing and analyzing massive amounts of visual material using computational methods. BID will provide art historians with a whole new set of analytic tools, adding new tonal range to our discipline without discarding any of the traditional art historical methods.

What is Digital Art History?

The Digital Age has revolutionized economy, society, and our private lives. For decades now, digitalization has also touched most branches of the humanities. With the rising importance of the so called digital humanities, art history ist about to change significantly. Thus, the “International Journal for Digital Art History” (DAHJ) will give authors in this field the opportunity to reach a wider audience, spark a discussion on the future of our discipline and generate an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners.