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Looking at Digital Art: Towards a Visual Methodology for Digital Sociology

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Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a call for a new kind of sociological gaze, a digital sociology for a digital age. Has there been fundamental change in the key principles, the nature, and functions of social life in a digital age? In social and cultural theory, there is a long history of looking at how technology transforms art. In this article, I will use the medium of digital art to consider the unique nature of the digital age, the demand for a digital sociology, and the interrelated speculative imagination of such claims. Broadly situated within the sociology of art the methodological contribution of this article is to offer an analysis of artworks themselves, via the construction of a digital visual methodology. What digital culture, politics, and revealed in digital art? How can looking at digital art expand the tools for understanding digitally mediated lives?

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Notes

  1. Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Introduction to Sociology: W.W Norton.

  2. See Marres, Noortje. 2013, “What Is Digital Sociology?”. Retrieved 11/17/2015, (http://www.csisponline.net/2013/01/21/what-is-digital-sociology/)., Marres, Noortje. 2017. Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research. London: Polity. Lupton, Deborah. 2012, “Digital Sociology: What Is It? Where Is It? What Does It Do?”. 11/17/2015 (https://storify.com/DALupton/digital-sociology-2), Orton-Johnson, Kate, Prior, Nick, ed. 2013. Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives. London: Palgrave.

  3. Daniels, Jessie, Feagin, Joe R. . 2011, “The (Coming) Social Media Revolution in the Academy” Fast Capitalism. 8.2 (http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/8_2/Daniels8_2.html), Lupton, Deborah. 2014. Digital Sociology. USA: Routledge.

  4. DiMaggio, Paul. 2001. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:307–36.

  5. Marres, Noortje. 2017. Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research. London: Polity.

  6. Orton-Johnson, Kate, Prior, Nick, ed. 2013. Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives. London: Palgrave.

  7. Jurgenson, Nathan. 2012. “When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution.” Future Internet 4(1):83–91.

  8. Durkheim, Emile. 2014. The Rules of Sociological Method. USA: Free Press.

  9. Lupton, Deborah. 2014. Digital Sociology. USA: Routledge.

  10. Rheingold, Howard. 2002. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. New York City: Basic Books.

  11. Shirky, Clay. 2009. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. USA: Penguin Books.

  12. Carrigan, Mark. 2013, “What Is Digital Sociology?”. Retrieved 11/17/2015, (http://markcarrigan.net/2013/01/12/what-is-digital-sociology/?utm_content=buffer842f9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer).

  13. Kalantzis-Cope, Phillip. 2017. The Work and Play of the Mind in the Information Age: Whose Property? London: Palgrave-McMillan.

  14. Papacharissi, Zizi. 2010. A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age: Polity Press.

  15. Marres, Noortje. 2017. Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research. London: Polity.

  16. Shenk, David. 1998. Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut. New York City: HarperOne.

  17. Anderson, Chris. 2008, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete”. Retrieved 1/21, 2016 (https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/).

  18. Kalantzis-Cope, Phillip. 2016. “Whose Data? Problematizing the ‘Gift’ of Social Labour.” Global Media and Communication 12(3):295–309.

  19. Castells, Manuel 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. London: Wiley Blackwell.

  20. Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2011. “Re-Constructing Digital Democracy: An Outline of Four ‘Positions’.” New Media and Society 13.

  21. Orton-Johnson, Kate, Prior, Nick, ed. 2013. Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives. London: Palgrave.

  22. Barney, Darren. 2008. The Network Society: Polity.

  23. Becker, Howard S. 1984. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  24. Hauser, Arnold. 1982. The Sociology of Art. USA: The University of Chicago Press.

  25. Albrecht, M. C., J. H. Barnett, and M. Griff, ed. 1976. The Sociology of Art and Literature: A Reader. New York: Praeger Publishers.

  26. Hauser, Arnold. 1982. The Sociology of Art. USA: The University of Chicago Press.

  27. Blau, Judith. 1989. “High Culture as Mass Culture.” in Art and Society: Readings in the Sociology of the Arts, edited by A. a. J. B. Foster. New York: SUNY Press.

  28. Albrecht, M. C., J. H. Barnett, and M. Griff, ed. 1976. The Sociology of Art and Literature: A Reader. New York: Praeger Publishers.

  29. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press.

  30. Inglis, David. 2005. “Thinking ‘Art’ Sociologically.” in The Sociology of Art: Ways of Seeing, edited by D. Inglis, Hughson, John: Palgrave Macmillan.

  31. Zolberg, Vera L. . 1990. Constructing a Sociology of the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  32. Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. London and Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  33. Paul, Christiane, ed. 2008. New Media and the White Cube. California: University of California Press.

  34. Bridle, James. 2014, “Beyond Pong: Why Digital Art Matters”, The Guardian. Retrieved 7/5/2014, (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/18/-sp-why-digital-art-matters).

  35. Bazzichelli, Tatiana. 2006. Networking: The Net as Artwork. Denmark: Digital Aesthetics Research Center.

  36. Tribe, Mark. 2006. New Media Art. USA: Taschen.

  37. Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. USA: MIT Press.

  38. Shanken, Edward. 2016. “Contemporary Art and New Media: Digital Divide or Hybrid Discourse?” in A Companion to Digital Art, edited by C. Paul. New York City: John Wiley & Sons.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Paul, Christiane, ed. 2008. New Media and the White Cube. California: University of California Press.

  41. See Krzys Acord, Sophia. 2006. “Beyond the ‘Code’: New Aesthetic Methodologies for the Sociology of the Arts.” Sociologie De L’Art:69–86, Zolberg, Vera L. . 1990. Constructing a Sociology of the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zangwill, Nick. 2002. “Against the Sociology of Art.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32:206–18.

  42. Debord, Guy. 2000. The Society of the Spectacle: Black & Red.

  43. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation: University of Michigan Press.

  44. Berger, John. 1990. Ways of Seeing: Penguin Books.

  45. Jenks, Chris. 1995. Visual Culture: Routledge.

  46. Burke, Kenneth. 1968. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method. USA: Univertisy of California Press.

  47. Neuendorf, Kimberly. 2002, “The Content Analysis Guidebook”, London: Sage Publications. Retrieved 09/01/2017, (http://www.theculturelab.umd.edu/uploads/1/4/2/2/14225661/neuendorf_2002.pdf).

  48. Feldman, Edmund Burke 1972. Varities of Visual Experience: Harry N. Abrams.

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  1. New School for Social Research, New York City, NY, 10011, USA

    Tamsyn Gilbert

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  1. Tamsyn Gilbert
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Gilbert, T. Looking at Digital Art: Towards a Visual Methodology for Digital Sociology. Am Soc 49, 569–579 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9384-2

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