Issue 1 (63)

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Arts & Cultural Studies Review

About the journal

For Authors

2025 (First View)

Publication date: 03.2025

Licence: CC BY

Editorial team

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Ewelina Twardoch-Raś

Editor-in-Chief Anna Nacher

Editorial Board Monika Górska-Olesińska, Agnieszka Przybyszewska

Issue content

Digital Art: Archives, Pioneers and Popularisation. Introduction

Monika Górska-Olesińska, Agnieszka Przybyszewska

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

W kręgu idei

From first festivals to institution. WRO Sound Basis Visual Art Festival and the polish digital turn

Sylwia Szykowna

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

This article deals with the institutional aspect of new media art, which is inextricably linked to the socio-cultural and political context of its development. In the article, the author focuses on the history of the WRO Art and Media Centre, the most important and only independent institution in Poland, which has been co-creating an alternative system of festivals and new media art centres since 1989. By analyzing the early period of WRO's activity, one can see the process of gradual institutionalization of the independent initiative initiated at a critical moment, i.e. during Poland's systemic transformation, by a group of young people from Wroclaw's punk counterculture community, who saw the new media as a tool of resistance and struggle against the repressive system of communist rule.

Video Game Preservation and Its Challenges

Agata Waszkiewicz, Paweł Frelik

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

The exponential growth of the number of mostly digitally-stored video games highlights the need for effective preservation strategies to ensure its longevity and accessibility. Given the short lifespan of digital media, defining what should be archived remains a fundamental challenge for both individual curators and institutions such as archives, libraries, and museums. This article examines the unique obstacles faced by video game preservation initiatives, emphasizing the need to recognize games as cultural heritage while accounting for their distinct medial properties and complex industrial and economic contexts. It begins with an overview of key discussions in video game preservation before identifying three major challenges that any comprehensive video game archive must navigate. The article concludes by exploring the broader implications of how these challenges are addressed.

Videosyntezy. Cartographies of the analog turn exemplified by the Tribute to Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski project.

Małgorzata Dancewicz-Pawlik

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

Video synthesis is a method of producing images using a video synthesizer that can generate images without any external input, such as a camera. It was developed mainly in the sixties in the United States by artists such as Steve Rutt, Bill Etra, Daniel Sandin, Robert Moog, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Nam June Paik and many others. What is important about this technology is its immediate performative nature, subversive use, and synesthetic dimension. Images and sounds have the same source, electromagnetic waves, and are created because of live interaction with the machine (video synthesizer). The article, which was supposed to be a kind of curatorial notes, is an attempt to show some cartographies of methods of media archaeology practices, using the example of the Tribute to Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski project presented during Vidoesyntezy exhibition.

Pejzaże kultury

Interakcje w sztucznych ekosystemach. Analiza twórczości Christy Sommerer i Laurenta Mignonneau

Ryszard W. Kluszczyński

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

This article analyses the work of Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer. They are perceived by new media art researchers as pioneers of interactive art and placed in the context of interface culture – an artistic, research and educational project they created and implemented for many years. The author of the article argues that the pioneering and innovative status of Mignonneau and Sommerer’s art goes far beyond creativity in the field of interfaces and interactivity itself. It emerges from the multidirectional relations between various aspects of new media art present in their works, combining interactivity with participation, generativity, performativity, embodiment, immersion and virtuality. Second-order cybernetics and cybernetic art, as well as theories of complexity and self-regulating systems, are extremely important contexts for the proper interpretation of the nature and role of interactivity in their work. Transdisciplinary relations between art, science and technology create an integrating framework for all of them.

If and how do machine dream and hallucinate? The works od Refik Anadol

Piotr Zawojski

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

The article presents, in the broad context of contemporary technological and artistic phenomena, the works of one of the most important artists currently using artificial intelligence in his practice – Refik Anadol. Although the main emphasis is placed on the Machine Hallucinations project, developed since 2018 in various versions, and in particular Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations presented at MoMA (at the turn of 2022 and 2023), other projects by Anadol and his studio are also discussed. The work of this artist arouses extreme reactions – from complete deprecation and statements that in this case we are dealing with “screensavers”, “psychedelic slush”, or “relaxation exercises” that pretend to be innovative (technologically) art, to genuine delight and recognition of the Turkish artist’s activities as groundbreaking achievements in the area of the use of algorithms and machine learning procedures. A critical look at the reception of these works and, above all, the author’s interpretation of the significance of using artificial intelligence in art based on Anadol’s work – leads to fundamental questions about research-based art and the emerging art of artificial intelligence (AI art).

Archiwum Fotozoficzne, czyli przedłużenie praktyki i koncepcji Andrzeja Różyckiego

Karol Jóźwiak

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

The aim of the article is presentation of Archiwum Fotozoficzne (the Photosophic Archive, later referred to as PhA) in terms of its profile and activity, traced from its initial premises, through current projects up to the future plans and wider context of the discourse around the contemporary art archives. It starts from the presentation of Andrzej Różycki, whose heritage is the basis of the PhA, as well as an analysis of the concept of photosophy, which he coined. Hence, different concepts of art, art and culture theory and collections relating to the idea of photosophy converge together in the idea of PhA. Its activity unfolds in three areas described in the article: education, research and art exhibition. The mode of the PhA presentation is determined by the personal view of the article author, who is at the same time its initiator of and its leader. Thus, the text is first person, autoethnographic account on Andrzej Różycki, initial premises of PhA, current projects and future plans and ideas.

Konteksty i rozważania

(How) to be preserved, or not to be? Artists’ voices on archiving and preserving digital literature

Agnieszka Przybyszewska, Monika Górska-Olesińska

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

Catching the Ephemeral: Archives and Latin American Digital Literature, Jose Aburto's Personal Journey

Jose Aburto

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

Latin American digital literature occupies a transformative space in global literary studies, where interactivity, materiality, and computational aesthetics converge with regional cultural and linguistic diversity. However, this field faces critical challenges, including technological obsolescence, linguistic marginalization, and infrastructural precarity. This paper explores these issues through case studies such as Jose Aburto's Paranoico arcoiris and collaborative preservation efforts like the Antología Lit(e)Lat. Drawing on decolonial digital humanities frameworks and theoretical contributions from Salazar Salgado, Gainza, Flores, Hayles, Kozak, and others, the study advocates for inclusive and sustainable preservation practices that reflect the sociotechnical realities of the Global South. This paper highlights its potential to reshape the boundaries of global literary heritage from the personal perspective of the author and his 25 years of work experience in digital and experimental poetry from Perú.

Deeply Dead, Coded Spaces Co-Created Long Ago With Trusted Friends

Stephanie Strickland

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

Reinventing as a preservation strategy for works of digital literature?

Serge Bouchardon

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

Broken Links and Digital Dreaming

Kate Pullinger

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

"Challenges of Born-Digital Electronic Literature". Agnieszka Przybyszewska and Monika Górska-Olesińska in conversation with Dene Grigar

Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 1 (63), 2025 (First View)

Słowa kluczowe: new media art, institutional definition of art, art world, institutional criticism, cultural policy, WRO Sound Basis Visual Art, media art festivals, video art festivals, video game preservation, archives, archival object, video synthesis, analog media, media an-archeology, re-performance, media cartographie, Refik Anadol, Machine Hallucinations, AI art, research-based art, data artis, Visual culture, image theory, vernacular culture, neo-avantgarde art, photography, university, Stephanie Strickland, Deeply Dead, Coded Spaces Co-Created Long Ago With Trusted Friend