The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Age

de Gruyter 2023

Edited by: Mara-Johanna Kölmel and Ursula Ströbele

With contributions by: Buket Altinoba , Claudia Giannetti , Elizabeth Johnson , Mara-Johanna Kölmel , Verena Kuni , Michael Rottmann , Karin Sander , Jens Schröter , Sasha Sobrino , Ursula Ströbele and Alexandra Weigand

“Digital technologies have profoundly impacted the arts and expanded the field of sculpture since the 1950s. Art history, however, continues to pay little attention to sculptural works that are conceived and ‘materialized’ using digital technologies. How can we rethink the artistic medium in relation to our technological present and its historical precursors? A number of theoretical approaches discuss the implications of the so-called ‘Aesthetics of the Digital’, referring, above all, to screen-based phenomena. For the first time, this publication brings together international and trans-historical research perspectives to explore how digital technologies re-configure the understanding of sculpture and the sculptural leading into the (post-)digital age.”

• Up-to-date research on digital technologies’ expansion of the concept of sculpture
• Linking historical sculptural debates with discourse on the new media and (post-)digital culture

Author information

Mara-Johanna Kö̈lmel is Associate Director of the exhibition platform peer to space. She obtained her PhD on Sculpture in the Augmented Sphere from Leuphana University and holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Ursula Ströbele is head of the Study Center for Modern and Contemporary Art at ZI Munich. She has been researching sculpture-related topics for years, most recently on the sculptural aesthetics of the living and on digital, virtual sculpture.