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• Sarah E.K. Smith, Western University
• Bethany Berard, Carleton University

Platforms are increasingly noticeable in the art world, where they facilitate engagement with artworks, artists, galleries, museums, and art fairs, building individual and institutional brands, enabling sales and networking. As Alison Hearn and Sarah Banet-Weiser (2020) argue, platforms “mediate our cultural lives, setting the terms of valuable visibility and influence.” While scholars are addressing how culture is facilitated by platforms (Poell et. al 2021), studies to date focus on user-generated content, where materials are created exclusively on and for digital platforms. How does art created offline figure into the discussion? While social media platforms Instagram and TikTok are image-intensive, others like Artsy, Etsy, Google Arts and Culture, and the European Media Art Platform, are tailored to visual art created offline and experienced through the platform. Exploring these dynamics, this session invites contributions on how artists and institutions utilize platforms and how platforms shape the terrain in which artists produce and circulate work.

keywords: platforms, visual art, social media, branding

session type: panel

Archive on Ice

• Imogen Clendinning, Western University

I am conflicted by The Cloud. The entropic swirl of digital data housed in off-site servers, where our digitized histories sit and wait. According to the extensive review conducted by Pendergrass et al., the digital archiving strategies of cultural heritage institutions are unsustainable due to cloud-based data storage, accelerated obsolescence and e-waste.¹ As an artist and researcher, I was motivated by these pitfalls in digital archive work. This led me to develop my own DIY digital archive, the Archive on Ice.

In January 2023 I designed a digital archive that resists existing models of data storage, opting to house the archival materials in a raspberry pi microcomputer and powered using solar energy. The micro-archive featured documentation and text from Ice Follies’ history, a biannual art festival that has taken place on the frozen ice of Lake Nipissing from 2004 to present. The Archive on Ice installation was featured alongside other artworks in the festival’s tenth iteration, placing the digitized archival matter within its historical context. My proposed paper would include a description of the Archive on Ice, a presentation of my findings, as well as a poetic engagement with the various convergences between memory, technology, the atmosphere, and the natural environment. This writing will engage with the field of environmental media, citing Jussi Parikka’s Geology of Media and Donna Harraway’s Staying with the Trouble, to define the symbiosis between the natural world and digital realms.² I also consider hacking as an act of resistance against a technocratic consumer culture, the speculative potentials of solar punk, and interrogate existing expectations of what we define as a “digital archive.” The Archive on Ice celebrates a reciprocal bond between the user, the Earth and technology, it is a collaboration with the snow, the wind and the sun.

1. Keith L. Pendergrass, et al. “Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation,” The American Archivist 82, no. 1 (2019): 165, doi: doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-82.1.165.

2. Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media, (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 1; Donna Jeanne Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, (Duke University Press, 2016).

keywords: hacking, DIY internet infrastructure

Unleashing the Power of Social Media for Ocean Data Art

• Brigitta (Eruige) Zhao, NSCAD University

In an era where social media branding plays a crucial role in visibility and influence, my paper delves into the potential of visual art to enhance the branding of scientific research. By presenting scientific data through aesthetically appealing and engaging art, I aim to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and the general public, making research more accessible and relatable.

As a data visualization artist and the recipient of the DeepSense "Ocean of Data Challenge" competition, I am currently interning with DeepSense, a groundbreaking artificial intelligence and machine learning company dedicated to supporting marine researchers and businesses.

My work is an active collaboration with data scientists and oceanographers. The marine data is reviewed for accuracy and validity. Next, I utilize the culled information, processing it through innovative sonification and visualization techniques to create multisensory digital fine art experiences shared on multiple social media platforms. These platforms then serve as channels for branding and promotion. This allows for broader dissemination of scientific research, reaching diverse audiences and fostering meaningful interactions. By crafting a cohesive brand narrative through art on Instagram, I aim to create immersive and interactive experiences that spark curiosity and encourage the audience to explore scientific concepts and ask questions.

My paper focuses on examining the dynamics between art, science, and branding on social media platforms. This research focuses on the transformative potential of visual art to elevate the visibility and impact of scientific research, ultimately fostering greater public engagement and appreciation for the intersection of art and science.

keywords: Instagram, ocean, data art, public education, digital art

“Website” is not a dirty word: making the best rich content available for artists, AI and future generations

• Donald Goodes, Independent

A website remains a go-to platform for artists to get their offline artworks seen online. Admittedly, in the contemporary-art community, which by definition must be concerned with the “new”, perceptions of being cutting-edge hold great currency. And websites are so…Web 1.0. An officer at a funding body confidentially advised using the euphemism “online publication” instead. Yet, Web 2.0 is also showing its limits (Greg Singh, 2019). Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are good for getting attention, but when it comes down to it, both humans and Web-3.0 AI information models want the type of rich content that can be delivered by online publications. The ability of websites to hold large amounts of dynamically linked information that can be democratically and instantly published on a planetary distribution system is still radical and useful.

For the 21,000 professional visual artists in Canada (Kelly Hill, 2019), the website platform can be a reliable means to respond to the needs of curators, juries, students, and buyers interested in their work, now and in the future. Effectively utilized, it can provide a platform where mature artists can have their retrospectives curated. And, because the internet is the world’s archive, it is where future generations will look for a deeper understanding of the radical pluralism of the last 50 years in art, in a world that may not look like ours.

The presentation will recount practical experiences gained while developing a web presence for artists. It will use various examples from the internet and case studies to shed light on the implications of online platforms for the representation and archiving of art objects from the avant-garde traditions. The presentation will also explore strategies for effectively responding to human-knowledge needs, as well as those of conventional web (Google) and AI search engines.

keywords: Web 1.0, Web 3.0, artist, online presence, archiving