Digital Art by Christiane Paul

This seminal book gave legitimacy to a field that was receiving renewed interest due to the success and rise of the Internet and net art. In Digital Art, Christiane Paul chronicles the transformative role of digital technology in art, focusing on technology as a medium itself from the early ’90s onwards, including net art and virtual reality.

By beginning its “survey” of the evolution of digital art in the early-’90s, the text distinguishes between digital technology as a tool for traditional art-making (e.g., plotter work) and as a medium for pioneering new artistic forms (e.g., net.art and Flash). Paul discusses pivotal artists and works while inspecting critical themes like interactivity, artificial intelligence and social activism, alongside issues concerning the preservation, presentation and ownership of digital art.

Paul spoke to this author (Peter Bauman) about Digital Art two decades later for a piece on Le Random Editorials.

Beyond her watershed book, Paul’s impact was vital in sustaining institutional interest throughout the decade once it began to wane. Paul singularly legitimized an emerging field, while chronicling and contextualizing its history.