Abstract

This talk will start with a discussion of the my project on Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas, as part of my work with Sabine Suesstrunk and Franco Moretti. The project was posed in the opposite way to most computer-science tasks: a clear database, but no clear problem to solve. Through the ‘operationalisation’ of some of Aby Warburg’s concepts – their critical conversion into a series of operations – I will present some of our work analysing the Pathosformel through human pose in the Bilderatlas, and the resulting tension between morphology and history.

In drawing some conclusions about this ongoing project, and where the road lies for computational art history more generally, I will touch on some epistemological and methodological uncertainties in the new field of the Digital Humanities. I’ll explain my own efforts to come to terms with the nature of these new types of research, touching on Critical Technical Practice (from Artificial Intelligence research) and artistic research. Finally, I’ll seek to explore the relationship between new forms of unscientific scientific research (including the Digital Humanities) and artistic research, and what common methodological, epistemological and technical challenges we share.