The Featured Researcher for November 2024 was Eleanor Capaldi, with a project titled, ‘How can the the use of digitised images of artwork facilitate polyvocality of interpretation online?’
HEIs: University of Glasgow, Schools of Culture & Creative Arts
Supervisors: Dr Michael Bachmann & Professor Stephen Greer
My research explores how reinterpreting digitised images of art online, across websites and social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, can foster new and complicating understandings of those images. In a wider context of GLAM organisations seeking to share their collections, educate and engage with diverse audiences, there is great potential in the online space to meet both of these aims.
Reinterpretations by online audiences can take many forms, which in themselves can range from the modest to the dramatic. This can include adding your own comments or captions to images of art, which may relay factual information or be more reflective or personal in nature. It might also look like directly amending, changing, or editing the original digitised image by adding text, colours, filters, remixing it into other forms like GIFs or Memes, or using the images to support video content. The digital space can afford such interventions with art images, not only in their editing but also the ways in which they are shared and recirculated back into the digital cultural landscape.
When considering reaching more diverse audiences, and the potential benefits of remix and reinterpretation, I decided to explore the impacts and implications for LGBTQ+ audiences in particular. This offers insight into how audiences who may not be reflected in permanent collections or alternatively find themselves the subject of a high profile exhibition or separate projects, are engaging with art that represents their histories and experiences. The internet has long been a place of support and community for LGBTQ+ communities where real life situations may not be so safe or welcoming. It has also become a place of knowledge and affirmation when questioning what a person’s feelings may mean. When considering queer reinterpretations of digitised images of art therefore, what is taking place in those acts of remix reflects further complexity.
To explore this further I developed a guide and facilitated a workshop for LGBTQ+ participants to remix art. In addition to considering the selection of images and the remixes themselves, the images – whether recognisably about and by LGBTQ+ artists or not – provided a space, in a cishet dominant world, to engage with a range of personal and shared experiences around being LGBTQ+.
I argue that reinterpretations of digitised images of art can and do provide new ways to understand those art images through multiple perspectives. These reinterpretations can complement gallery defined interpretations, while simultaneously holding distinct value for the remixers and their community.
