Books
Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning
May 2023, MIT Press
In this book, I investigate what could be termed art historical analysis from outside the field—i.e., within computer and information sciences—and frame this research in the context of art historiography. Doing so reunites these studies with core concerns in the history of art. The primary objective in applying computational techniques such as machine learning to art datasets is to automate the process of categorization, which means that traditional parameters such as period or artistic style are often the focus. Interdisciplinarity continues to be a buzzword in academia, but any communication between disciplines is often rife with epistemological disconnects. By critically examining the stakes involved in combining computational methods with humanities subject matter, this book aims to bridge the gap between analogue and digital art analysis.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computational-formalism
From City Space to Cyberspace: Art, Squatting, and Internet Culture in the Netherlands
2021, Cities and Cultures series, Amsterdam University Press
The narrative of the birth of internet culture often focuses on the achievements of American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but there is an alternative history of internet pioneers in Europe who developed their own model of network culture in the early 1990s. Drawing from their experiences in the leftist and anarchist movements of the ’80s, they built DIY networks that give us a glimpse into what internet culture could have been if it were in the hands of squatters, hackers, punks, artists, and activists. In the Dutch scene, the early internet was intimately tied to the aesthetics and politics of squatting. Untethered from profit motives, these artists and activists aimed to create a decentralized tool that would democratize culture and promote open and free exchange of information.
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463725453/from-city-space-to-cyberspace
Made in Brooklyn: Artists, Hipsters, Makers, Gentrifiers
2018, Zero Books
Made in Brooklyn is a critique of the Maker Movement: from its origins in the nineteenth century to its impact on labor and its entanglement in the neoliberal economic model of the tech industry. Part history, part ethnography, Made in Brooklyn provides a unified analysis of how the tech industry has infiltrated artistic practice and urban space.
www.zero-books.net/books/made-brooklyn
Doctoral Dissertation
“Between the Cracks: From Squatting to Tactical Media Art in the Netherlands, 1979-1993” (2019)
Book Essays & Chapters
“The Growing Pains of Digital Art History: Issues for the study of art using computational methods.” In Digital Human Sciences: New Objects – New Approaches, edited by Sonya Petersson, 127-151. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2021. Open Access.
“Mining Art History: Bulk Converting Non-Standard PDFs to Text to Determine the Frequency of Citations and Key Terms in Humanities Articles.” In Digital Human Sciences: New Objects – New Approaches, edited by Sonya Petersson, 285-305. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2021. [with Anna Dahlgren]. Open Access.
“‘We Have Decided Not To Decide’: The End of History and the Punk Politics of De Reagering.” In Aftermath: the Fall and Rise After the Event, edited by Robert Kusek, Beata Piątek, and Wojciech Szymański, 177-192. Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2019.
“Piraten Utopia’s: Platform-Televisie.” In Maarten Ploeg: Ploeg + Werk, 1958-2004. Amsterdam, Maarten Ploeg Trust, 2018.
Edited Special Issue
“The Politics of Metadata.” Special Issue, Digital Culture & Society 6, no. 2 (2020). [editors: Anna Dahlgren, Karin Hansson, Ramón Reichart, Amanda Wasielewski] https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/dcs/6/2/html
Academic Journal Articles
“Authenticity and the Poor Image in the Age of Deep Learning.” Photographies 16, no. 2 (May 4, 2023): 191–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2023.2189158
“‘Midjourney Can’t Count’: Questions of Representation and Meaning for Text-to-Image Generators.” IMAGE: Zeitschrift Für Interdisziplinäre Bildwissenschaft 37, no. 1 (May 2023): 70–81. https://image-journal.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IMAGE-1614-0885-37-2023-H-71-82.pdf
“The Museum in Quarantine: Architecture, Experience, and the Virtual Museum Tour.” Journal of Curatorial Studies 11, no. 1 (April 2022): 4-24. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jcs/2022/00000011/00000001/art00001
“Interfaces of Art: Meyer Schapiro, Fernand Léger, and the Role of the Art Historian in Anachronistic Artistic Influence.” Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (June 2022). https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/26-jun22/.
“The Digital U-Turn in Art History.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift/Journal of Art History 0, no. 0 (December 13, 2021): 1–18. doi:10.1080/00233609.2021.2006774 [authors: Anna Dahlgren, Amanda Wasielewski]
“Cultures of Digitization: A Historiographic Perspective on Digital Art History.” Visual Resources (September 30, 2021): 1–21. doi:10.1080/01973762.2021.1928864 [authors: Anna Näslund Dahlgren, Amanda Wasielewski.]
“Introduction: The Politics of Metadata.” Digital Culture & Society 6, no. 2 (2020): 7-17. doi:10.14361/dcs-2020-0202 [authors: Anna Dahlgren, Karin Hansson, Ramón Reichert and Amanda Wasielewski]
“From Rogue Sign to Squatter Symbol: Origins of an Urban Meme.” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action. doi:10.1080/13604813.2019.1615772
“Books Were Opened: The Apocalypse of Margaret of York (Ms. M.484) and Spiritual Empowerment of the Laity in the Fifteenth Century.” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 5, no. 4 (Autumn 2016): 76-110.
http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol5_4/toc5-4.html
“Lurking Within Reach: Stereoscopic Photomicrography in the 1860s.” History of Photography 39, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 56–70. doi:10.1080/03087298.2014.996379
“Grains of Gold in All This Shit: Web 2.0, Crowdsourcing and Participatory Art.” Hz Journal, no. 16 (March, 2011).
http://www.hz-journal.org/n16/wasielewski.html
Other Articles
“Postcards from the Ruins: Legends of Chicago’s South Side.” The Towner, February 2, 2017.
“Stockholm’s Uneasy Urbanism: Lone woodsmen between pastel facades and austere wilderness.” The Towner, November 28, 2016.
“Baghdad as Antiopticon: Mutating Security Walls in a Two-Dimensional City.” The Towner, July 11, 2016. [with Agri Ismail]
“Data as Monument: The Dystopia of the Column of Figures.” PEER Paper Matters, no. 1 (February 1, 2016): 53-59.
“Children of the Moon, Dancing to Death.” 3:AM Magazine, September 28, 2015.
Exhibition Catalogues (artwork)
Šarčević, Bojan (curator). Intentional Stance. Amsterdam: Stichting Ateliers 63, 2012.
Cluitmans, Laurie, and Arnisa Zeqo (curators). He Disappeared into Complete Silence: Rereading a Single Artwork by Louise Bourgeois. Haarlem: De Hallen Haarlem, 2011.
Gallagher, Ellen, Saskia Olde Wolbers, John Stezaker, and Wolfgang Tillmans (curators). Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2009. London: New Contemporaries, 2009.
Unpublished
“Psychogeographic Mapping Through Film: Chantel Akerman’s News From Home and Patrick Keiller’s London” (2008)
“From the Urban Dérive to the Internet Dérive: Deterritorialized Capitalism in the Guise of a Digital Utopia” (undergraduate thesis, 2007)