Curating in the Age of Artistic Ubiquity and of Visulizing Techniques

Abstract

The present cultural interest and technological effort around the subject of data mining, information retrieval and data and information visualization, not only in scientific fields, but also in common cultural experience has a strong paralel with the task of curating which, in the XXst century has mostly been devoted to the field of art. This proposal will comment on the meaning of curating and of its extension to the whole of information culture. The sense of information overload and of the insufficiency of search engines and content aggregators, that have become a daly tool for everyone naviating the internet, are a consequence of the fact that we have indeed become a society of producers, with millions of users who daily display their own traces, their own voices, images, texts and a diversity of digitally shaped and designed media objets through various platforms. While most cultural institutions and museums hesitate or timidly experiment about what kind of curating and archiving practices will most suit the information age they will be forced to enter, digital visualizing techniques are already starting to shape the cultural landscape of the present, its salient traits, its reception and reading protocols. As the former must quickly realise that curating is becoming one of the central breakthroughs of media culture and perhaps the next claim of the masses, the latter should take into account that contemporary culture, namely media practices, have been strongly influenced and criptically anticipated by modern deviating ambiguous signs at the margin of cultural and artistic dominant curatorial systems.

References

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