Coordinator

Annet Dekker (at ASCA)

Members of the research group

Ofri Cnaani, Basma Hamdy, Roosje Klap,Noa Roei, Kendal Beynon, Wang-Yun Yen

Additional members:

Geoff Cox, Andrew Dewdney, Elena Marchevska, Katrina Sluis, Dan Barnard, Adam Brown, Mateus Domingos, Rachel Falconer, Tim Fransen, Rosie Hermon, Victoria Ivanova, Theresa Kneppers, Jon Lee, Joshua Magor, Nicolas Malevé, Marco De Mutiis, Lynn Adhiambo Obath, Paula Roush, Metra Saberova, Teodora Sinziana, Winnie Soon, Gaia Tedone, Simon Terrill, Magda Tyzlik-Carver, Marloes de Valk, Qian Xiao, Ioanna Zouli

Description of the research program

This group is part of the CSNI (Centre for the Study of the Networked Image) which brings together researchers from cultural studies, software studies, contemporary art, media and performance practice, who seek knowledge and understanding of how network culture transforms the production and circulation of images.

CSNI understands that the “networked image” is at the centre of a new global mode of reproduction and representation in which the visual image is paramount. We realise that what constitutes an image has been radically transformed, and with it the theories that allow us to study it. Although we have to date largely followed a historicity based on the photograph, we recognise the anachronism, and the need for an enlarged scope that can account for the image as a dynamic, distributed and computational object that unsettles received notions of space-time — no longer limited to traditional representation (what media artist and theorist Harun Farocki has called “operative image”). Yet in using the term “networked image” — preferring it to operative image (or even post-photography) — we aim to emphasise the network as a descriptor of dynamic social relations as much as technological infrastructure.

Moreover our aim is to broaden the discussion of the networked image to address planetary scale computation, the politics of infrastructure, and wider ecologies that would include non-human entities and environmental concerns.

Activities

Seminar every 6 weeks, in which group members discuss ongoing projects, give peer feedback, and read new and classic texts relevant to their research.

We are also part of international collaborative events that are organized within the larger network of CSNI, for updates see https://www.centreforthestudyof.net/

Workplan and time schedule

CSNI’s programme is organised through the following interconnected themes:

• alternative knowledge production through experimental publishing and shadow IT;
• sustainable digital preservation through low-tech and community-based solutions;
• machine curation in the context of massified image production and planetary-scale circulation;
• machine ways of seeing, algorithmic literacy, and the implications of machine learning on visual culture;
• contemporary networked performance practices in relation to the non-human turn.

Currently CSNI@ASCA is part of the following international research projects:

• Documenting Digital Art. Rethinking histories and practices of documentation in the museum and beyond, with University of Exeter, London South Bank University, The Photographers’ Gallery, Australian National University, LIMA and Venice Biennial, 2019-23 funded by the AHRC;
• MOD-VLE. More Openness and Diversity in Virtual Learning Environments, with University of Amsterdam, Piet Zwart Institute, London South Bank University, Aarhus University, University of Limerick and Transmediale (2020-22), funded by a UvA network grant;
• Sustainable Preservation for Digital Art, with University of Amsterdam (NL), University of Exeter (UK), Whitechapel Gallery (UK), University of Altea (ES), Nomeda Pluriversidad Barcelona (ES), LIMA (NL), Masaryk University (CZ), The Kitchen Brno (CZ), The Greens/EFA (NL/EU), 2022-present (funding pending).

Societal relevance

CSNI’s approach to research is reflexive, sensitive to contemporary conditions: attentive to how it is constituted as a network of people and ideas, as well as reflected in a networked approach to knowledge production (so, in this sense, we are more a commons than a centre). Our list of partnerships support this claim, including our ongoing projects and events in collaboration with other research centres and cultural organisations, allowing us to study the networked image in action.

CSNI supports transdisciplinary research across a range of cultural practices, including — but not limited to — computation, photography, publishing, curating and performance. Although our emphasis is on commons-based practice-based research our work is grounded in rigorous academic methods that are applied in real-world situations, aiming to connect cultural policy, practice and theory.

This research group is active in the following constellations:

Art & Aesthetics

Cultural and Social Critique