Digitalisation

Digitalization in all its manifestations is also an initiator, driver and change maker in the creative economies. The following publications provide insights into the ZCCE’s research approaches and analyses.

Frédéric Martel, “Mainstream”: Who will win a global war (2020, new edition)

For over a decade, Mainstream has been considered a key study on the cultural industries, the media and digitisation. Among blockbusters, bestsellers, hits or social networks, a global struggle for cultural and digital influence has broken out. From Hollywood to Bollywood, from China to sub-Saharan Africa, from Mexico to Japan, this unprecedented survey was conducted in 30 countries over a period of five years. The book tells the story of this new global war of culture and media. With its translation into 30 languages, the book itself has become a bestseller and thus “mainstream”.

Extract

Frédéric Martel, “Smart Curation and the role of algorithms in cultural reception” (2015)

If one looks at the cultural public in digitalization, a paradoxical picture emerges: The cultural public explodes and implodes, platforms and algorithms are instances of self-determination and heteronomy, while human behaviour reacts to the codes of nature, culture, society and the machine. All of these codes are involved when culture as the public negotiation of values has to find new forms in digitalization. From DNA to robot control, from the most original to the most advanced accounting, from the narrated to the calculated future — it is always a matter of how history and stories are “written”. This publication surveys the key debates on digitalization — it constitutes fieldwork in the changing fields of the cultural public and includes a collection of images on the writtenness of the world, art and society.

Part 1/3
Le critique cuturel est mort vive la smart curation

Part 2/3
Le critique curation algorithme rêve déçu 

Part 3/3
La smart curation recommandation humaine algorithme

Frédéric Martel, “The cultural critic is dead! Long live Smart Curation!” (2016)

Does the future of cultural criticism lie in the hands of “machines”? Is this future generated by the recommendation algorithms of Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, etc.? No, what is required is the combination of algorithms with human judgment. This line of thought was discussed in a research initiative titled “Smart Curation” based at Zurich University of the Arts.

Simon Grand, Christoph Weckerle, "Curating as Strategy" (2018)

4 years, 40 projects, 1’000 participants: Patrick Müller and Nuria Krämer gathered the wealth of activities that took place within the framework of “Connecting Spaces Hong Kong – Zurich” in With: A Bookazine on Collaboration between Cultures, Art Forms, and Disciplines. The volume includes an essay by Christoph Weckerle and Simon Grand.

Simon Grand, Christoph Weckerle, “Economification and Culturalization – Dynamics and Governance Models” (2018)

This essay was published in Scripted Culture: Digitisation and Cultural Public Spheres, edited by Ruedi Widmer and Ines Kleesattel (Diaphanes, 2018).