Digital Archiving and Virtual Museology

Niamh McDonnell (Dublin)
January 2010

This seminar series explores the intersection between the theory of digital archives and the practice of their design and construction as a virtual museum. The philosophical status of objects this poses is investigated through looking at the way in which the means of representation of objects through digital technology is a form of the expression of their virtuality. The epistemological and aesthetic questions raised by this approach pivot on the crossing between disciplines, addressing art historians, computer programmers, biologists, philosophers, mathematicians, new media theorists and practioners.

Niamh McDonnell, currently based in Ireland, is a 2008 PhD graduate of the history department at Goldsmiths University of London, where she completed a philosophy thesis on Deleuze's reading of Leibniz. She is currently co-editing and contributing to Deleuze and the Fold: a Critical Reader (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). The seminar Digital Archives and Virtual Museology held as a part of her residency at the e-t+t in Riga will continue her interest in plying philosophy to the consideration of epistemological, aesthetic and ethical questions pertaining to design in new technologies.

Residency is supported by ETH Zurich and Embassy of Ireland in Latvia.