The augmented artwork – between past and future Art History, Semiotics and Digital Humanities Winter school at Academia Belgica and Villa Medici in Rome
(January 15-19, 2024)
Contact : Pierluigi Basso pierluigi.basso@univ-lyon2.fr and Gian Maria Tore gian-maria.tore@uni.lu
In the era of digital images, the computer offers us ever more images reproduced and networked, notably by artificial intelligence, while portable media encourage their manipulation without limits. At the same time, our era seems driven by the demand to renew our relationship with works of art according to forms of appropriation that are both more democratic and personalized, contrary to an interpretative tradition considered too elitist. Therefore, shouldn’t the study of art be relaunched from such trends: not endure them or embrace them, but see them as an opportunity for valuable problematizations? It is in this sense that we propose to tackle what we call the augmented artwork.
This winter school wants to offer an opportunity to rethink the artwork of art in the digital age: between art history and semiotics of the artistic image, but also between exhibition practices and new modes of visualization , in the development of a Digital Art History. To begin with, it will be necessary to re-examine the presence of the artistic image, which is not obvious, as well as its staging, since the artwork is more than ever exhibited, reproduced and associated with other images. Focused on painting from the 15th to the 19th centuries, the school will then initially ask an already old question: what should we see in a artwork of art to better understand it? How to deal with your uniqueness? How can we analyze the way in which it re-examines its cultural environment? Now, if the artwork is a paradoxical evidence, because it is difficult and never acquired, it is because it consists of the whole of what it can make seen, of what it was able to make seen and of this that she will show.
In its presence and its mode of exhibition, the artwork has never been isolated. This is why it has always been, in a sense, increased. It will therefore be a question of combining a reconstruction of the experiences of observers with a reopening of the artwork, thanks to a multiplication of hermeneutic frameworks. To prevent the artwork from being reduced to a data archive, its past will be linked with its future, its philology with its power of dialogue with other artworks. But it will also be important to design an active and critical pedagogy of digital media, which makes it possible to analyze and generate very large databases on the one hand, and to artwork on the artworks differently on the other hand.
The media today are increasing the artwork of art in new ways. And they do not necessarily lead to a forgetting of materiality: on the contrary, they can make it possible to master the layers of organization inherent to the artwork, including the traces of the alterations undergone, and the modes of its exhibitions, the links of the artwork with other objects, past or possible. Hence a coherent project to increase the artwork of art in situ, which the school will propose from a double perspective: archaeological, which restores the fabric of relationships constituting the artwork over time; criticism, which offers a space imposing the artwork as a power to organize our gaze. The artwork will be illuminated by the proximity of other artworks or objects, on site or on screen; and it will be analyzed by the stratification of the gestures of its establishment and its transmission, material and cultural. The art object will thus be redefined in itself – in its poetics, its aesthetics – as well as in its tensions with larger dimensions – social, historical, technological – concerning the artwork, the image, the vision more in general.
Finally, this school will be the opportunity for a joint effort between art history and visual semiotics to carry out corpus analyzes taking advantage of advances in new technologies that produce knowledge.
To this end, the school will focus on experimental workshops in the presence of exhibited artworks. The objective will be to describe and explain the images by other images, by grouping them into families and connecting them into rhizomes. Priority will be given to the visual assembly and disassembly of images, reducing its verbal presentation as much as possible.
These activities, framed by epistemological conferences and animated by methodological discussions, will be entirely focused on training in analysis and collective and plural confrontation.
Pierluigi Basso Fossali (University Lyon 2), Gian Maria Tore (University of Luxembourg) Ralph Dekoninck (Catholic University of Louvain) and Sophie Raux (Université Lyon 2)
Monday January 15, Academia Belgica
1:30 p.m. Presentation of speakers and participants Augmented Artwork Analysis, a research project
2:00 p.m. Pierluigi Basso Fossali and Gian Maria Tore, Project positioning and epistemological requirements
2:20 p.m. Discussion
2:30 p.m. Pierluigi Basso Fossali, Ralph Dekoninck and Gian Maria Tore, Visual methodological questions: image boards
3:30 p.m. Discussion
4 p.m. Break
4:15 p.m. Thibaud Latour, Visualization questions: an application for analysis via image networks
4:30 p.m. Tetiana Yemelianenko, Using Multimodal Foundation Models in Visual Arts
4:45 p.m. Image classification exercise in dialogue with AI (coordinated by the laboratory LIRIS from the University of Lyon 2)
5:15 p.m. Organization of work
CONFERENCE
5:30 p.m. Reception
6:00 p.m. Bertrand Prévost, Augmenting images: sign, figure and augury
7:30 p.m. Dinner (registration required)
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Tuesday January 16, Villa Médicis
Welcome to the Villa Médicis with Francesca Alberti (director of the Art History department)
9:15 a.m. Welcome to the Music Room
09:30 Francesca Alberti and Ariane Varela Braga: Presentation of the latest work Narratives of Stones and Materials at the Villa Medici
10:00 a.m. Francesca Alberti: Presentation of the issue of Artist Graffiti – the case of the Galerie des Carracci
10:30 a.m. Discussion
10:45 a.m. Break
THEORY AND METHODOLOGY in art history, semiotics & digital humanities
11:00 a.m. Angela Mengoni, The plural temporality of the augmented work: anachronistic logic and art history
11:30 a.m. Bertrand Prévost, Corpus, context, continuities
12:00 Discussion
12:30 Lunch at the Villa
1:30 p.m. Visit to the Villa
EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS
3:00 p.m. Debriefing with the participants’ point of view on the “augmented work” project
3:30 p.m. Team workshops, 1: Plan to increase a body of selected works (preparation of visits and appropriation of the Miro platform)
5:30 p.m. Break CONFERENCE
6:00 p.m. Federico Nurra, Digital in art history or digital art history?
7:30 p.m. Reception
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Wednesday January 17, Academia Belgica
EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS
09:00 Team workshops, 2: In situ examination of the corpus (works at Palazzo Barberini, Sant’Agostino, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) 1:30 p.m. Lunch at the Academia THEORY AND METHODOLOGY in art history, semiotics & digital humanities
2:30 p.m. Sophie Raux, Lighting effects and augmentation of the work of art: the contribution of digital lighting simulation tools
3:00 p.m. Discussion
3:15 p.m. Pierluigi Basso Fossali, The dramatization of visual enunciation: the case of the nocturnal in painting
3:45 p.m. Discussion
4:00 p.m. Gian Maria Tore, The motifs of painting: joys and impasses of studies by image collections
4:30 p.m. Discussion
4:45 p.m. Break EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS
5:15 p.m.-6 p.m. Team workshops, 2bis: Debriefing of visits
Thursday January 18, Academia Belgica
THEORY AND METHODOLOGY in art history, semiotics & digital humanities
09:00 Floor Koeleman, Digital Dosso: Transforming Art Histories into Research Data
09:30 Discussion
09:45 Mathias Blanc, Supporting a visual epistemology with digital technology: from Max Imdahl’s Iconic to the Ikonikat application
10:15 a.m. Discussion
10:30 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. Federico Nurra, Nothing is “given”
11:15 a.m. Discussion
11:30 a.m. Debriefing with the participants’ point of view on the digital dimension of the “augmented work” project
12:30 Lunch at the Academia
EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS 1:30 p.m. Team workshops, 3: Studies for an augmented presentation of the corpus (work on Miro)
5:00 p.m. Break
5:15 p.m.-6 p.m. Pooling of team work
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Friday January 19, Academia Belgica
THEORY AND METHODOLOGY in art history, semiotics & digital humanities
09:00 Alberto Sangalli, Restorations and revisions of the painting, based on a case by Lorenzo Lotto (I): the material dimension
09:30 Giuseppe Di Girolami, Restorations and revisions of the painting, based on a case by Lorenzo Lotto (II): the technical dimension
10:00 a.m. Discussion on the interventions and the material dimension of the work of art, in relationship with the next World Congress of Art History
10:45 a.m. Break
EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS
11:00 a.m. Team workshops, 4: Finalizing presentations
12:30 Lunch at the Academia
1:30 p.m. Presentation of the teams’ studies and discussions: – Chiesa di Sant’Agostino Project (45m) – Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna Project (45m) – Palazzo Barberini Project (45m)
3:45 p.m. Break
4 p.m.-5 p.m. Discussion of the results obtained and projection towards subsequent projects