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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00561
- Thesis Title
- Art and Technology in the Second Half of the 20th Century: The Code as Paradigm
- Author
- José Oliveira
- E-mail
- j.gomesdeoliveira AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2016
- Number of Pages
- 463
- University
- Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa
- Thesis Supervisor
- Margarida Acciaiuoli
- Supervisor e-mail
- acciaiuoli AT fcsh.unl.pt
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Jorge Martins Rosa
- Language(s) of Thesis
- Portuguese
- Department / Discipline
- Contemporary Art History
- Copyright Ownership
- José Oliveira
- Languages Familiar to Author
- Portuguese and English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Not yet available
- Keywords
- Art and Technology, Code, Technoculture, New Media, Systems Aesthethics
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- The thesis sustains that code (computers programming code, as well as the genetic code), represented starting points for a paradigm shift in contemporary art when it began to be integrated in art practices in the second half of the 20th century.
Those new models originated from a certain resistance in welcoming those new mediations, both at the critical and institutional level, which, consequently, lead to lack of attention regarding its integration into the mainstream art history discourse and a lapse in time that is important to rehabilitate in order to understand the 21st century art practices.
The first part of this study is concerned with the analyses of the social and tecno-cultural contexts of the 20th century as well as the new aesthethic directions (systems, information and database aesthetics) in order to show that the technological shift based on information and (later) biologic technologies, were not foreign environments in the artistic creation.
The second part of this study is concentrated in the artistic practice analysis of the early developments and support of new media pioneers (both in national and international terms), with some emphasis on works by Portuguese artists Leonel Moura and Marta de Menezes, as differentiated examples of the use of code (information technology and biology) in their respective artistic projects.
The artistic practice in the early 21st century, briefly considered at the end of this study, shows that new paradigms were brought to light with the introduction of new media. Namely at the institutional relationship level, in the archive and preservation methods, in exhibition and selling works of art, in the creation of new interdisciplinary academic curriculum and artistic research, and in the synergies (and sometimes symbiotic approach) between art and science.