Digital Art as Intangible Heritage: A Shifting Cultural Landscape

Amira Gad • 2/1/25

• Abstract

  This section of The Curatorial, The Algorithmic State, considers visual culture, forms of intelligence, imaginative and critical faculties, and the revision of art historical notions in the digital sphere. For example, contrary to early utopian claims for the liberatory potential of artificial intelligence, AI has proven to be a technology of extraction. The resources required to run it, the downward pressure it places on wages, and the data harvested from every action and expression of its users all require an increase in socially and ecologically damaging practices. So, what are the costs, on a planetary scale, of a network that is increasingly the cause and the tool of undemocratic governance and inequity? Can we salvage the liberatory potential of AI? These and other questions related to technological advancements, as they pertain to artistic and curatorial practices, will be addressed in this section.

  In “Digital Art as Intangible Heritage,” Amira Gad examines the evolving relationship between digital art in its various forms and cultural institutions. The essay addresses the reasons for digital art’s importance in culture today and gives a brief history of the medium and early institutional support in the West. Gad then discusses essential characteristics of this art and speaks about the tension between entertainment and critical engagement, considering the benefits of digital artistic production as a lever for the democratization of art in general while also speaking to the problems emerging from technodiversity, including digital colonialism. In this light, Gad calls for cultural institutions to redress power imbalances between the Global North and South through the auspices of museums prioritizing diverse voices and perspectives while being mindful of how digital infrastructures often perpetuate existing inequalities. She advocates for a more nuanced and critically engaged approach to digital art curation that goes beyond simple experiential presentations of spectacle to foster meaningful cultural discourse and inclusive representation.

Artists in our pervasively digital culture have naturally engaged with its technologies. They have used it as a medium in the making of a work (such as internet art, interactive installations, or Mixed Reality (MR) works), as subject matter for reflection, and as a way of challenging the way we engage with it and society at large. Technology continues to transform how art is created and experienced, as well as its dissemination. And so, the question of how to engage with digital culture within the contemporary art sector is all the more relevant. The need to reflect this dynamic and evolving digital culture within institutions was accelerated by the 2020 global pandemic. The cultural sector had to rapidly move real-life engagement online, kicking off a feverish search for “digital strategies.” For some, this search put a spotlight on existing work. For others, it was the start of exploring what it meant to work with digital culture in their respective contexts. Without a doubt, the pandemic marked a paradigm shift in attention to digital culture across the cultural sector.

The platform on which so much of this work takes place is the internet. Internet art, or net art, first emerged in the 1990s and used the platform as a medium and subject. Curating these works within the physical space of a museum brings layered complexities. Institutions need to bridge the gap between online and offline worlds. Now, more than 30 years later, it is worth questioning whether the definitions of digital art still stand—particularly within an intrinsically evolving genre.1 Post-internet art, for instance, came about at the beginning of this millennium. It refers to art created in a world in which the internet is ubiquitous. Post-internet work does not necessarily have to be online or digital, but it’s shaped by the conditions of a networked world. It reflects how artists engage with digital culture and the omnipresence of online platforms. I’d like to return to this perspective on digital culture as I believe it should guide institutional thinking toward focusing on culture, rather than technological tools. It mirrors the fact that the digital per se is not separate from us but is well-embedded in every aspect of our lives, even to the point that it is a challenge for us to dissociate ourselves from it.

Ian Cheng: Life After BOB, 9 September - 6 November 2022 at Halle am Berghain, Berlin © 2022 Ian Cheng. Presented by LAS Art Foundation © Dario Laganá

Digital Strategies in Museums

Over the years, museums and institutions across the globe have set up protocols and experimented with how to engage with digital culture, from exhibition to preservation and collecting. A non-exhaustive selection from the Western institutional landscape includes Rhizome (founded in 1996), New Inc. (established in 2014), and in Europe, there is ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (founded in 1989), HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste) in Basel (established in 2011), and across the pond in London is my former employer, the Serpentine Galleries, to name a few. Since the 1980s, these various institutions have continued to lead the conversation in digital culture, highlighting the range of approaches to curating new media in the contemporary art context, whether it’s an open-ended and exploratory laboratory that allows for projects to redefine the role of technology in contemporary art or an interdisciplinary residency that enables the exchange of ideas to ensure a fluid and forward-thinking conversation. While the institutions cited here dominate a Western-centric discourse, digital culture is an international phenomenon that transcends geographical boundaries and speaks to the shared experience of living in a networked society.

Consequently, museums across the globe are picking up the pace. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York was the first to commission net art and holds the United States’ leading conservation lab in the field. The most common approach adopted by museums is similar to Tate Modern’s digital strategy that aims to “embed digital thinking across the organization” by developing online platforms.2 The Tate Digital Studio, for example, offers digital art commissions, virtual exhibitions, and interactive projects to extend the museum’s reach beyond its physical walls. On the other end of the spectrum, another type of initiative has emerged to zoom in and bank on the assumed entertainment quality that digital art can enable, such as Pace Gallery’s commercial initiative Superblue that was launched in 2020 to create a space for experiential art. This is where definitions start to get a bit blurry.

Hito Steyerl: Power Plants. Installation view, 11 April – 6 May 2019, Serpentine Galleries. AR Application Design by Ayham Ghraowi, Developed by Ivaylo Getov, Luxloop, 3D data visualisation by United Futures. Courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York) and Esther Schipper Gallery (Berlin). Photograph: © 2019 readsreads.info

The Hallmarks of Digital Art

One of the hallmarks of digital art is its potential to provide immersive and interactive experiences. The cultural sector strives for this kind of audience engagement. The recent article “Immersive Art is Exploding, and Museums have a Choice to Make,” by Felix Barber and András Szántó, addresses the hurdles, dilemmas, and market value of this art and its venues within today’s experience economy.3 Frequently cited examples include immersive and interactive installations by teamLab, United Visual Artists, Refik Anadol, and Random International, each of which has shown us how “new and younger” audiences can be targeted through the experiential nature of their works, often qualified as (and sometimes reduced to being) Instagram-friendly. This might involve participatory elements, real-time interaction, or using social media to extend the experience beyond the physical space. Their large-scale, immersive installations promise a theatrical experience that can transcend the ordinary, evoking awe and wonder while blurring the boundaries between the art object and the audience’s role as active participants. In this idealized vision, technology holds the potential to reach new audiences and reshape how we experience art in a way that feels transformative.

This is the essence of what the promise of digital art is for the cultural sector: the possibilities of expanding our understanding of art and making it accessible to new and younger audiences through engagement and interactivity, while also enhancing art’s publicity through online exposure. Unsurprisingly, this essence is at the core of the institutional struggle wherein digital art is utilized more often as a marketing tool to increase visitor numbers and ticketing revenue. The consequence of this is that the initial (curatorial and artistic) objective to reflect on the role of and relationship between technology and society, and to engage with contemporary art discourse, is sidetracked. Most significantly, the radical experiments and thinking that technologists and artists seek to engage with are too often overshadowed. The intersection of technology, art, and commerce reflects a growing trend in which the line between cultural experience and marketing is simply becoming far too blurred—and as such, definitions of digital culture are becoming more ambiguous. This raises concerns and cynicism about institutions’ ability to present digital art without risking turning it into a commodity—an experience designed for consumption rather than critical engagement.

Essentially, what I’m proposing here is not to ignore the entertainment quality of digital artistic practice, but to veer away from exhibiting “pure” experiential presentations. In other words, without an added or follow-up layer of critical reflection, these works are just another dot among the infinite productions that will not stand the test of time within cultural infrastructures. As a curator who has increasingly worked with digital artistic practices over the last few years, I’m often asked to hit those targets: the immersive presentation that will bring new kinds of audiences in with the ambition to renew people’s interest in the museum altogether. And for this, I always exercise caution and steer the focus to make sure that the presentation is doing more than creating immersive experiences, which returns me to the definition I started this essay with: art that is created in a world where the internet is ubiquitous and where works don’t have to be digital but that are shaped by the conditions of our networked world.

It should be noted that the idealism of digital culture is inherent and, in fact, inherited from the technology sector as a whole: techno-utopianism is the belief that technology can revolutionize society, solve problems, and create a more equitable world. These ideals, of course, have historically permeated the arts, too. Certainly, technology is often seen in the arts as a tool for liberation, providing new modes of expression, breaking down barriers to entry, and democratizing access to culture. The often-participatory nature of digital art embodies this hope that technology can foster a more connected, engaged, and inclusive society. However, while this vision captures the imagination, it also risks oversimplification. The belief that technology can solve complex societal problems too frequently overlooks the broader systemic issues and ethical dilemmas that come with it. There’s a tendency to view technology through rose-tinted glasses, assuming it will naturally lead to positive change without critically considering who controls it, who benefits from it, and who may be left out.

Simon Denny: Products for Organising. Installation view: Serpentine Galleries, 25 November 2015 – 14 February 2016. Photograph © 2015 readsreads.info. Courtesy of the artist

 Democratizing the Arts

This potential to break down boundaries between audiences and museums and disrupt the structures of traditional art institutions is at the core of the promise of digital art. As technologies do offer the means to decentralize art production and distribution, this is largely true. Social media platforms, online marketplaces, and decentralized blockchain networks allow artists to reach global audiences directly, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of the art world such as galleries, auction houses, and museums. The NFT (Non-Fungible Token) boom (which was also intensified by the global pandemic) exemplifies this decentralization, offering artists new ways to monetize their work and establish ownership over their digital creations without intermediaries, challenging traditional models of art valuation and distribution. They also expanded the notion of art collecting, making it accessible to anyone (with a crypto wallet). This created a supposedly more democratic system where artists can gain visibility without needing to conform to the standards of the institutional art world. The hierarchies within traditional institutions are then flattened, and the protocols that often limit accessibility are bypassed. In theory, this opens the door to a more inclusive and diverse art scene.

Still, the NFT space is not without its issues. While digital platforms expand access, we shouldn’t neglect factors such as digital literacy, internet access, and representation. Access can be questionable as it assumes a certain technical know-how from the user on how to open a crypto wallet, for instance.4 Questions of authenticity, value, and sustainability have also plagued the NFT market. The environmental impact of blockchain technology, particularly the energy-intensive process of minting NFTs, raises concerns about the broader ecological implications of digital art (just as crypto mining and powering AI are posing increasingly serious energy concerns). While NFTs democratize access in some ways, they also reflect the speculative nature of the art market, where hype and scarcity can inflate prices, sometimes at the expense of artistic merit or cultural significance, leaving yet another challenge for the cultural sector to siphon out the myriad productions and evaluating what is meaningful in that realm.

These ideas around democratizing access to the arts can sometimes feel reductive. One could argue that among the pitfalls of a so-called global outreach facilitated by digital culture are the crucial issues of inclusivity and accessibility. That’s to say that if we set aside the importance of digital literacy and equality of resources for a moment, we immediately find ourselves facing questions concerning technodiversity and digital colonialism. When I speak of digital colonialism, I’m specifically referring to the phenomenon of dominant entities exercising control over digital spaces, resources, and platforms—typically companies in technologically advanced and economically powerful regions. Economist and writer Yanis Varoufakis takes it further and coined the concept of “technofeudalism” where he likens the owners of big tech with the world’s feudal overlords, replacing capitalism with a new system and calling for us to escape our digital prison.5 When this troubling subject comes up, it’s often reduced to Big Tech’s use of data. Yet this is too simplistic. Digital colonialism runs deeper. It is manifested in the dominance of Western-centric narratives and perspectives in online content. It imposes technological standards and norms that marginalize diverse voices and cultures. And not only does it extract data and resources from developing countries, but it does so also without equitable compensation. All of this raises critical questions about ownership, representation, and the ethics of technological innovation in the context of cultural production. We need to re-evaluate digital practices in our commitment to decolonizing digital spaces in the pursuit of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts.

In this pursuit, technodiversity is key to promoting digital pluralism and the development of alternative, sustainable practices that highlight diversity. And as we do this, whether we are speaking, say, about democratizing access or the potential of blockchain technologies, it’s crucial to consider what is buried in these colonial legacies and ask: Whose access? To whose benefit? Should the cultural sector be an agent in these power dynamics? As museums engage in decolonial practices of their collection and programs, it is precisely these questions (and no doubt others) that have to be taken hand-in-hand with the curating we do, with collecting, preserving, and engaging digital culture in the widest sense.

When it comes to my curatorial engagement with digital artistic practices in the Western cultural sector, particular attention is paid to how we could flip the balance or how we could monopolize the Global North in favor of the Global South. How can ideas of technodiversity be applied to the museum context, to be inclusive and not have art museums and institutions contribute to increasing power gaps and inequalities? There are two ways in which this could be done: on the one hand prioritizing working with artistic practices or thinkers who raise awareness that the digital infrastructures as we know them today are built at the expense of the Global South.6 And the other lies in the importance of integrating diverse voices in the Global North narratives and stepping out from the echo chambers often illustrated by the same group of artists representing the voice of digital art today and who are exhibited widely. To do this, and to give legitimacy to new entries, the museum institutions need to become the platform that enables and essentially shapes these voices from the Global South by giving them access to the very technologies that contribute to their suppression. To be successful in this, I think a combination of both strategies is necessary and it is a long-term game of slow infiltration. When we talk about reframing narratives and decolonial practices within the museum, we eventually end up in thinking about the preservation of those narratives and the inclusion of those voices within museum practices, and this is epitomized by a museum’s collection.

Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive, 2024. Installation view, Serpentine Galleries, London, 2024. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.

 Shifting Cultural Landscapes

As previously touched upon in this essay, one of the tenets of digital culture today, brought on by blockchain technologies among others, is shifting our thinking about ownership and authorship because of its advocacy of horizontal and collective ownership, and transparency. So, how do we reconcile traditional models of collecting with the advent of the digital age and its ethos? How do we tackle collecting (in other words, centralizing) artworks that are decentralized and distributed? This inadequacy prompts a need for a new ecosystem, with new protocols and alternative frameworks.

One way of looking at this is to approach engaging with (and so presenting, collecting and preserving) digital culture as we do intangible heritage. By approaching digital culture as we do intangible heritage, we acknowledge its fluid, evolving, and non-tangible nature, focusing on the preservation of the knowledge systems, practices, and contexts that give rise to digital works, rather than just the outputs or artifacts themselves. This method places emphasis on the cultural and social values embedded in digital practices, allowing for a deeper understanding of the communities, narratives, and innovations behind these works. Like intangible heritage, digital culture requires active participation and transmission across generations, ensuring its continued relevance and adaptability. This approach would help cultural institutions create frameworks that not only archive and exhibit digital art but also foster a living, breathing dialogue with it, continually adapting to technological advancements while safeguarding the context and meaning behind the work.

Artists are pioneers of (technological and) cultural discourse. So perhaps we should model our strategies to their thinking in addition to presenting, exposing, and exhibiting their work. And so, should our new collecting strategies (of digital artworks) also be distributed and decentralized? The museum sector could, for instance, consider a strategy whereby a network of organizations could leverage their respective strengths (distribution of (financial) resources) in collectively managing a truly global and international heritage of our digital culture (decentralized collecting) that illustrates the techno-utopian promise of digital art discussed earlier: to be free of transnational boundaries. The challenge is to define such protocols of authorship and ownership that reflect the collaborative and dynamic nature of digital culture.

Envisioning this new model opens the possibilities to learn from the horizontal hierarchies of blockchain technologies. By fostering greater collaboration, institutions can create more inclusive and representative collections. This approach not only democratizes access but also ensures that collections remain relevant to current artistic practices. As the boundaries between institutions, artists, and audiences blur, the need to balance the preservation of digital culture with innovation and accessibility is all the more important. The future of collecting digital art depends on how well institutions can adapt to this new paradigm and how it can restructure its programmatic budgets to prioritize such a global network.

Digital culture is challenging the cultural sector to be future-proof and relevant today through considering more radical, experimental, and innovative approaches to their structures that mirror changing society. From incubation and experimentation to preservation and critical discourse, organizations reflect how digital works of art are created, exhibited, understood, and remembered. The overlap between art, technology, and society necessitates an interdisciplinary approach to understand the artistic and technological dimensions of digital culture. These cross-pollinations might keep institutions and their audiences from falling into the trap of either spectacle or obsession with technological tools, each of which steer away from the multilayered dimensions of digital culture—and so an understanding of the world we live in. This calls for evolving the thinking and operational modes of the cultural ecosystem to embrace the ever-changing nature of digital culture.

As custodians of culture, this is an invitation for us to imagine a new cultural ecosystem that aligns with the ethos of digital culture. The utopian ideals that surround digital art stem from a belief that technology has the potential to solve the world’s problems and usher in a more equitable future. But let’s consider the ideal where curatorial practices can be decentralized and collaborative, that collecting can be a globalized and shared practice and where the art sector can empower voices and blur the lines of transnational boundaries. As with any tool, technology as much as culture is shaped by the hands that wield it.

NOTES

1. The digital culture field has a rich history that is not being elaborated here for scope. See, for instance, Art in the Age of the Internet: 1989 to Today, ed. Eva Respini (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018); Christiane Paul, Digital Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 2023); and Curating Digital Art: From Presenting and Collecting Digital Art to Networked Co-Curation, ed. Annet Dekker (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021).
2. Digital transformation | Tate Digital Transformation, Tate website, accessed August 28, 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/digital-transformation.
3. Felix Barber and András Szántó, “Immersive Art is Exploding, and Museums have a Choice to Make,” ARTnews, accessed August 22, 2024, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/opinion/immersive-art-industry-and-museums-1234715051/.
4. A crypto wallet is typically an application downloaded on a smartphone that allows for the safekeeping and storage of cryptocurrency.
5. Varoufakis, Yanis. Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism. New York: Melville House, 2024.
6. For example, architect and researcher Marina Otero Verzier’s work explores how built environments intersect with global systems of power and control. She often examines the impact of technological advancements on social structures and public spaces, critiquing issues like surveillance, labor, and ecological degradation. Another reference is writer Arthur Steiner's book The Digital Atlas: an exploration of the social, cultural, and political impact of digital technologies around the world. The book emphasizes the importance of "digital geographies," showing how technological infrastructures affect human experiences, identities, and power structures. Steiner's work is significant for promoting a more nuanced understanding of digital spaces, highlighting both the potential and pitfalls of technological advancements.

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• About Amira Gad

  Amira Gad, an Egyptian-French curator, is Conservator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Previously, she served as a curator at the Serpentine Galleries in London and as Curator at Large (Arts Technologies) at KANAL – Centre Pompidou in Brussels, where she developed the museum’s strategy for engaging with digital artistic practices. Over the years, Gad has curated exhibitions by Ian Cheng, Sondra Perry, Arthur Jafa, Hito Steyerl, Zaha Hadid, Simon Denny, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others. Gad has been part of a number of juries and is a regular contributor to artists’ catalogues.

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