Born Digital

The 1990s saw the advent of a technological transformation in video art, as digital storage media such as DVDs replaced analogue video cassettes. The works of many artists from this period reflect on globalization and mirror the radical technologization of society. Since the start of the new millennium, creatives have been inspired by products of popular culture such as video games. These are complemented by CGI (computer-generated imagery), hacking and new forms of image distortion such as ‘glitches’, all of which have left their mark on video art. Increasingly, artists working in all disciplines are using digital technologies to produce their works, for installations and multimedia collages. That wider usage has transformed the aesthetic of the artworks, their relationship to space and time and, with it, the sensory experience for the viewer. The discourse has also widened to encompass questions such as: How do we train our perception to cope with the daily deluge of moving images? How do artists react to the shift from analogue to digital? What themes distinguish the new perspectives that have gained access to the global canon since the millennium? What is the relevance of video to the art of the 2000s, and what means of production does it use?

The exhibition, along with the media preservation and art-historical analysis required, has been supported by Memoriav, the Association for the preservation of the audiovisual heritage of Switzerland. The Dr Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation is also supporting the exhibition.