Person

Doctoral project: Resolutions: The aesthetics and politics of information in contemporary art

The past decade of contemporary art has seen an abundance of research- and data-based art, with artists increasingly using scientific modes of inquiry, presenting bodies of data, and using informational technologies as a medium. I argue that this tendency largely exists because artists today often depend on academic institutions or other knowledge economies for funding and exposure. Within this new paradigm of art-making, artists become knowledge workers, and art is evaluated as a knowledge process, as information in itself. This raises new questions about art's authenticity and authorship, artists' agency, and ways of viewing art. With this critique as a starting point, the analyzes and compares how selected contemporary artists utilize informational technologies, bodies of data, and research methods in their artworks.