The Digital Condition and the Reconstitution of the Public(s)
In the following text, I wish to outline how the public – understood here as the (potential) patrons of cultural institutions – is being reconstituted under the digital condition, and how their agency, expectations and needs differ from those of the public that was constituted under the regime of print and broadcast media to which cultural institutions traditionally catered. I will start by sketching some of the key features of the digital condition and then show how these shape the transformation of the public from a more or less passive/reflective audience to one that plays a range of more active roles, which may include, but frequently also go much further than the passive/reflective role. I will refrain from making specific recommendations, because the ways in which these general structural realities manifest themselves, and the kinds of openings/closures they produce, are highly dependent on local conditions best known to the practitioners on the ground.
Source
Stalder, Felix. 2021. “The Digital Condition and the Reconstitution of the Public(s).” In Art, Museums and Digital Cultures: Rethinking Change, edited by Helena Barranha and Joana Simões Henriques, H. Henriques. Instituto de História da Arte, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, p.275-85
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34619/hwfg-s9yy