What is Digital Culture?
Digital culture is not a clearly defined field; it consists of many multidisciplinary practices that overlap with other sectors. This is its strength, but also its Achilles heel.
Performing a Landscape, Jan Robert Leegte
Multidisciplinary practices
In general, ‘digital culture’ refers to the area of the cultural and creative sector in which, inspired by fundamental research and development, new forms of interaction, audience participation and storytelling are explored using information and communication technologies, digital applications and media platforms. Digital culture is therefore intrinsically innovative.
This results in a wide range of forms, from installations and games to performances and XR productions.* The field is by definition interdisciplinary and multimedia. It is intertwined with other disciplines and sectors: industry, technology, research and social initiatives. This makes digital culture hard to define as a sector. At the same time, this interconnectedness underlines its importance to society – after all, we live in a digital culture.
Thanks to its early development of high-quality digital infrastructure, the Netherlands has long played a pioneering role both in the introduction of new media and in critical thinking about its significance. The renowned community network project The Digital City (De Digitale Stad, 1994), for example, is regarded today as a visionary precursor to the now ubiquitous social media. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the importance of creative and critical research on the relationship between technology and society, and on central and decentralised confluences of knowledge and power, has only increased.
The Creative Industries Fund NL, one of the most important funding bodies in this sector, includes the following definition in its Digital Culture Grant Scheme:
“Digital culture: the field of work within the creative industry related to artistic and social design challenges pertaining to the virtual domain, new technologies, new media or games, including activities aimed at analysing, researching and reflecting on these challenges”
-
EExtended Reality (XR) is the umbrella term for technologies in which the user is immersed in an entirely or partially virtual reality: Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR).
Dancefloor - Sander Veenhof
Education, Culture & Science
All three fields covered by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science are relevant to digital culture. The sector has been developing in the Netherlands for decades, both independently and as a connecting force between diverse disciplines, including film, art, theatre and music. The sector maintains extensive relationships with other professional and specialist areas; social applications and cross-pollination with art, technology and science are intrinsic to digital culture. Moreover, innovation and development are in its DNA.
(Un)Resolved, Ado Ato - Tamara Shogaolu
Critical thinking
In addition to telling original stories, conducting research and development and experimenting with new tools and techniques, digital culture also looks critically at new digital developments. A critical attitude is important because these technologies have a major impact on our world and our lives.
What does it mean to live in a metaverse or in virtual worlds?
How do cryptocurrencies affect our sense of trust?
How do text and image generating AI programmes such as ChatGPT and Midjourney affect our notion of originality and creativity?
Digital culture can reveal what is happening beneath the surface, expose underlying mechanisms and power structures and ask questions about the desirability of particular techniques. By critically following and questioning developments beyond the techno-optimism of Big Tech,** we can influence the course they take and encourage the general public to reflect on our digital culture.
LAWKI-NOW, ARK
-
Big Tech refers to the most dominant companies in the information technology industry, specifically the five largest US tech companies: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and Microsoft.
Long history
In the Netherlands, digital culture has a long history, and many makers and artists in the field have achieved international recognition. Peter Struycken was one of the first computer artists with an international reach. Artist and researcher Rosa Menkman is also a well-known voice internationally. Her work focuses on glitches that result from ‘accidents’ in both analogue and digital media. Other examples are Jodi, Constant Dullaart, Esther Polak and Rafaël Rozendaal.
Labs and organisations also play an international pioneering role. They include Waag and V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, which operate in the field of critical research, dialogue, production, presentation and archiving. In their view, art plays an essential role in embedding technological developments in society.
Beyond Resolution, Rosa Menkman
Forms
The term ‘immersive’ refers to stories and films in virtual reality (room-scale, interactive or as 360° video, augmented reality or mixed reality) that can be experienced via headsets. They may take the form of a VR cinema with a menu offering different titles, or of an installation in which you can walk around and touch objects, as with Alison’s Room, a work by digital architect Paula Strunden, shown at Nieuwe Instituut, exploring the possibilities of virtual reality for archival and design research. We also see projects in the more commercial sector, for example during Immersive Tech Week in Rotterdam, which features a wide range of work, and is also an opportunity for the B2B sector to meet.
Another form of digital culture are installations, which can also be described as ‘immersive’, and which explore different forms of storytelling and human-computer interaction. These types of works vary widely, ranging from temporary spatial installations to video works and NFTs linked to objects. Habitat by Heleen Blanken is an example of a data-driven project, consisting of 3D scans of organic objects such as stones, corals and fossils that can be experienced in a meditative game environment, combined with an interactive soundscape.
Games have a clear pioneering role in digital innovation. Game developers have been creating immersive digital worlds and interactive online environments for decades. These developments now appear to have been the precursor to a broader movement towards a digital society. Games are therefore an important part of digital culture. A distinction can be made between commercial games by major studios such as Guerrilla, and games in the art world by independent makers, such as Next Space Rebels by Floris Kaayk. The Dutch Game Association explains in its position paper that it is now ready to grow from the starting phase into a scale-up.
We also find performances in the world of digital culture. The immersive and interactive research project Good Neighbours by Affect Lab (Klasien van de Zandschulp and Natalie Dixon) combines live performance, doorbell cameras and chatbot messages in public space. Participants are subjected to the surveillance capabilities of a neighbourhood WhatsApp group.
In parallel with all these varied forms of expression, R&D play a major role in the creation of new work. This takes the form of workshops, fellowships and labs, both for young target groups and for mid-career artists. There are workshops in specific digital technologies or aimed at making children digitally resilient through creativity. Labs also play an important role in research and development.
Finally, the growth of the sector grows brings an increasing but unfortunately still neglected need for archiving. Digital culture comprises many forms and media that rapidly become outdated. This places high demands on archiving. Organisations such as LIMA, Network Archives for Design and Digital Culture (NADD), The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, and Eye Filmmuseum assemble collections and conduct research into methods for maintaining archives and making them accessible.
Flylight, Studio Drift