The Impact of Digital Image Technology on Art History

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Outline

Art history deals with the presentation and interpretation of various artworks that define human cultures. These arts represent values long held by people and representing them in arts like sculptures means people would like them to be carried on. Much information has been lost through the ages and there are concerted efforts to preserve the remaining arts. This article entails the definition of art history and its use. The similarities between information technology and art history have been outlined. The differences between the two have also been outlined. The coming of information technology has opened great opportunities to preserve the arts and challenges have also arisen. The development of information technology has been traced to its use in the arts. This paper outlines the main challenges arising from efforts of preserving the arts and the gains made. The paper concludes by passing a recommendation on the efforts that we should all take to preserve our arts.

Introduction

Modern society is undergoing profound technological and social changes as a result of the complex information age. There are numerous developments in electronic information technology that affects, not only individuals but also institutions and governments. These developments have affected what is done, the way things are done, and how they relate to one another. The learning institutions have received the greatest impact as they seek to develop new approaches to keep up with the technology. It is in these institutions that lots of information is circulated and shared.

Arts involve handling lots of information. A lot can be gathered from history in the form of drawings, writing, conversations, and other forms. This historical information needs to be preserved so that it does not lose its meaning. Constant handling of documents with vital historical information ruins them and thus better methods are needed to handle them. Information technology has eased information transfer by fastening it. The audience that can be reached by the information has broadened thus saving on time and costs.

Art history

Art history is a branch of the humanities concerned with the study of works of art (such as paintings, sculptures, and architectures), their history, construction, and meaning as cultural products. Such arts are mostly preserved in museums making them inaccessible to others who desire to learn more from them. Photographic reproduction has long been used to capture the arts but lately, technological advancement has opened up other channels to store these arts. These channels present a promising opportunity to learn more about peoples ancient cultures and help understand some current ones (Durran, 1994).

Art history is mainly concerned with the interpretation of the meanings represented by arts. Arts history is only concerned with the gathering and interpretation of arts. Lots of pictures and drawings are collected and analyzed, one compared with others. The various methods of analysis used by art historians are formal, stylistic, and iconographical analysis. Information technology on the other hand deals with the storage of the arts. It does not in any way deal with the meanings in the arts. Information technology is concerned with the accessibility of the arts to those who need them.

A contrast between art history and information technology lies in those who advance the disciplines. Computer scientists who develop sophisticated systems for capturing, preserving, and conveyance of information drive information technology. Art history on the other hand is the field of historians whose interest is to establish the meaning held by the arts. Computer scientists assist art historians to do their work better and with more objects for comparison. The historians interest in cultures of the people from whom the arts are found. Computer scientists on the other hand have no special interest in the arts as much as they are interested in handling information of any type.

The similarity between art history and information technology is that both deal with the arts that have been gathered from ancient days. Arts history provides the substance, the arts, while information technology plays a facilitative role in the presentation of these arts. Information technology is the medium that historians are using nowadays to reach a greater audience with the arts. People today prefer convenient modes of communication. Information technology is about the conveyance of information while art history is about what that information means.

Information technology

Information technology has come a long way. Previously, arts were captured in pictures in the form of drawings on walls and were cataloged. Libraries and museums were the main storage places for these objects. Retrieval of such objects was rigorous and time-consuming. It also required permission from the relevant authorities. This limited the extent the historians could go to analyze the various meanings of the arts. The information age has brought vast benefits through the establishment of databases as storage media. The availability of the arts has improved therefore making it possible for everyone interested in the arts to access them from the comfort of home computers.

With the advancement of this technology, the quality of images has become a central point of concern. Art historians insist that for the real meaning of any art object to be drawn from pictures, it has to be captured without loss of texture or colors and other features. They insist that all features have to be captured in these photos. Information technology has managed to provide an almost excellent way to capture them through digital images photography. Digital photography captures most of the features in their original form. High-resolution cameras that have these capacities are increasingly being adopted to capture and store the arts (Baskins, 2007).

The main challenge of capturing the arts in pictures is presenting them with their dimensions. The cases where the arts are sculptured can only be fully interpreted if its dimensionality is considered, something that these images are unable to capture. The other challenge has been the acquisition, organization, and display of these images. Art historians have not interacted much with computer systems and this poses the challenge to them to manage perfectly the database and transfer the images to make lecture presentations. This means that for these historians to work well with the new technology, they have to learn to operate the computer system as well as understand all jargon used in the computer world. The issues of sharing the information stored in this database also pose a challenge. This sharing of information also poses the risk of infringement of copyright laws (Bailey & Graham, 2007).

Conclusion

Arts represent our history. They represent the artists thoughts on various issues. They represent a way of life for a people. Arts therefore should be preserved at any cost. The developments in technology have made great gains in the preservation of these arts. Though the current systems are not perfect and that more developments are needed, the information age has made a tremendous contribution to see our history preserved. We should therefore encourage art historians to work hand in hand with the technologists to preserve our well-held values.

References

Bailey, C and Graham, M. (2007). Compare and Contrast: The Impact of Digital Image Technology on Art History.

Baskins, C (2007). Teaching and Learning Art History with Digital Images. Tufts College. Web.

Durran, J. (1994). Developments In Electronic Image Databases For Art History. Melbourne. Web.

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