DIGITISATION OF AN ARTWORK AS A PROCESS OF PRESERVING ARTISTIC VALUE: FROM OBJECT-BASED REPRESENTATION TO A PROCESSUALCONTEXTUAL APPROACH

Abstract

The article aims to substantiate a processual-contextual approach to the digitisation of artworks, oriented towards preserving artistic value through consideration of the author's intention, the process of creation, and the experience of reception. The relevance of the study is driven both by the rapid development of digital reproduction technologies and by the threat of cultural loss under wartime conditions, in which digital archives frequently become the sole evidence of a work's existence.
The study employs an interdisciplinary approach combining methods from aesthetics, cultural studies, and media theory. The theoretical framework draws on Walter Benjamin's concept of the aura, Erwin Panofsky's iconological model, the Nara Document on Authenticity (UNESCO/ICOMOS), the London Charter for the Computer-Based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage, and Lev Manovich's media theory. The theoretical arguments are supported by empirical data from neuroaesthetics and research on digital exhibition environments.
It is established that artistic value is not an inherent property of the work itself, but emerges through the interaction between the author, the work, and the viewer, and is shaped by three interrelated components: the author's intention, the process of creation, and contextually conditioned reception. It is demonstrated that conventional digitisation, focused on reproducing visual form, overlooks those dimensions that constitute the artistic experience: bodily presence, the temporal dimension of the original, and the work's spirit and feeling. It is shown that any digital representation is not a neutral copy but an interpretive claim that carries the subjective perspective of the person performing the digitisation.
The proposed approach treats the digital environment not as a space for copying, but as an environment for accumulating interpretations and expanding experience. It involves documenting the creative process rather than its result alone, contextualising the cultural and social background of the work, and gathering authorial, curatorial, and viewer interpretations as equivalent layers of meaning.
The scientific novelty lies in the conceptualisation of digitisation as a process of generating the conditions for artistic value to arise rather than reproducing it; in the distinction between the models of reproduction and expansion; and in an original interpretation of the concept of the aura in the digital environment as the unique trajectory of a subject's interaction with a digital system.