From Maps to Databases: Genealogies of Spatial Data between Digital Art History and Contemporary Culture

The contribution explores the status of spatial data within Digital Art History (DAH), arguing for a shift beyond a purely technical view to recognize it as a complex cultural artifact. Tracing a genealogy that weaves together the history of cartographic techniques – from the Ptolemaic revival to the rise of GIS – with contemporary artistic practices, the essay shows how the mathematical abstraction of space was both anticipated and questioned by conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s. By examining the transition from the analog map, understood as a static representation, to the database conceived as a dynamic and process-based system of relations, the text places the theories of Manovich and Drucker in dialogue with critical geography, drawing on works that foreshadowed an aesthetics of data. The aim is to outline a perspective in which DAH embraces spatiality as an essential critical lens, fostering a convergence between methodological reflection and the historical understanding of visual forms.

Full-text of the article is available for this locale: Italiano.