Cryptoart and Digital Humanities: Transtechnological Perspectives and the Challenge of Tactical Positions

Dragana Stojanović

doi:10.25038/am.v0i28.496

Authors

Dragana Stojanović

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.496

Keywords:

digital humanities, technology, trans-tactical positions, cryptoart, experimentation

Abstract

Contemporary times always pose a challenge for theoreticians who try to map it and encode it. Nevertheless, it is more than important to grapple with present times and bring out the topics that can engage understanding of present discourses, potentials, and possibilities. It is even more true with art and humanities that, each on its side, faced significant challenges from the rise of technology-driven reality. As for the art, it seems that technology gives more opportunities and options than ever, but it is not without questions of value, authenticity, ownership, commodification, or artivist practices. As for the humanities, they already faced the alleged “crisis” due to the new wave of technocracy. New technology offers new media, new languages, and new discourses. But is it all good news? Should art and humanities form a kind of a (trans)tactical (im)pact and adopt the technology language, or would such a turn create more slippery points than easy-going practices? This paper will try to examine transdisciplinary and transtechnological coordinates of art and humanities taking the case study of cryptoart and blockchain system usage in contemporary artistic practices. This will also engage the discussion about digital humanities, which might be one of the next transdisciplinary steps to continue the fierce line of experimentation, and to combat the trend of going back to disciplinary frameworks.

Article received: December 18, 2021; Article accepted: February 1, 2022; Published online: April 15, 2022; Original scholarly article

Author Biography

Dragana Stojanović

Dragana Stojanović
Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade
Serbia

Dragana Stojanović, an ethnomusicologist and art/media researcher and currently an Associate Professor for Cultural Studies and Theory of Art and Media at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade. As a researcher she is specifically interested in the complexity of media-pervaded and media-immersed societies, as well as in the phenomena of change which contemporary technologies are bringing to the fields of art studies, art production, media studies, memory studies, sound studies, and education studies. She also works, writes, and publishes in research fields such as gender studies, Jewish studies, and popular culture.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i27.496