Theoretical Strategies And Critical Approaches

The advent of the digital age has brought the combination of art and technology to a new height.Digital technology not only plays an important role in artistic creation and becomes an organic integral part of the work,but also actively integrates into the process of art communication and criticism,bringing new changes art and art theories.With the rise of virtual reality(VR),augmented reality(AR),computer algorithms,artificial intelligence and other technologies,the types of digital art have also been greatly enriched due to the extension of existing creation material and media,and new categories of digital art such as VR art,generative art and AI art has emerged.Meanwhile criticism and research on emerging art categories have also received extensive attention.However,due to the professional barriers of digital technology itself,digital art creation is a black box to a certain extent: critics and viewers cannot fully understand the technology of art production,which may cause certain misreading and cognitive difficulties;and at the same time,how to understand the role and significance of digital technology in the field of art rather than technology,and integrate it into art criticism reflection and theoretical production,also poses new challenges for theoretical researchers.Virtuality is an important attribute of digital technology.As digital technology is applied to artistic creation,virtuality has become the main characteristic of digital artworks,changing the strategy and approach of art production and criticism.This is mainly reflected in: 1)a series of important issues of digital art have been formed with virtuality as the core,such as virtual space,virtual experience,virtual reality,virtual generation,etc.;2)among the above issues,virtuality and other technologies and art theories,such as immersion,embodiment,realism,and generativeness,have combined and become a set of digital art theoretical strategies;3)based on the above strategies,the establishment of a new path of criticism centered around the concept of virtuality and a break from the traditional path of “media-form-content” which targets themes and styles gains a significant meaning in the new era.This dissertation takes “virtuality” as the core concept and studies the issues on virtuality in digital art from the perspectives of theoretical strategy and critical approach.Through clarifying the connotation of virtuality in art,technology and philosophical theories,and identifying the existing theoretical paths in the three fields,it establishes a theoretical strategy with virtuality as the core,and a critical approach around art experience,art form and art production.The first chapter reviews the development of digital art from a technical point of view,and finds that virtuality as a technical attribute and media characteristic always runs through it.By clarifying the cross-connotation and theoretical path of the concept of "virtuality" in the fields of philosophy,technology,and art,it reveals a theoretical strategy that can be established around the core issues of virtuality.The second chapter is the core of this dissertation.It discusses in detail the main topics of virtuality in digital art from the perspective of theoretical strategies,namely virtual space and art experience,virtual reality and art form,and virtual generation and art production.The first section mainly draws on Oliver Grau's media-image theory and N.Katherine Hayles' embodiment theory,starting from the visual mechanism and audience experience to reveal the unique characteristics of digital art,which are closed visual mechanism,accessible virtual space,and multi-sensory immersive experience.The second section mainly uses Michael R.Heim's theory of virtual reality and Lev Manovich's new media theory.Starting from the relationship between reality and actuality reflected in the content of digital art works,it reveals that art form of virtual reality is a fusion of material and information.The third section mainly relies on the theory of generative art.Through the analysis of the two emerging art forms of generative art and artificial intelligence art and their technical paths,it reveals the technical logic behind digital art production,that is,rulebased evolution and generation.The third chapter focuses on the theoretical strategies established with virtuality as the core,and criticizes the representative digital art cases under different categories to establish an approach focusing on virtuality to criticism of digital art.