From strategic presentation to dynamic interaction

On the integration of www based information systems into the daily research and teaching practices of Art History departments. The online presentation of Art History departments in conventional HTML format is becoming a vital forum for the key research and teaching information. A www-project at the Art History department of the Humboldt University, Berlin shows the potential of how dynamically generated HTML information and course content can contribute to achieving the goal of incorporating www based publication tools (seamlessly) into the daily workflow. Art History and its Media The academic subject Art history has changed greatly, in its attitude towards the usage of medial research and teaching equipment. Managing the digitalization and networking of text and image collections is becoming a daily occurrence, within the research and teaching practices. The transformation of the medial aspects of research and teaching aids means more for the subject Art history today than perhaps for any other discipline, as the objects of analysis in Art Historiography present themselves less as original objects, but as their medial representations. The technologically reproduced image has been the central medium of the subject Art History since its establishment in Universities, in both research and teaching practices. It is now more than 100 years, since the acceptance of Photography as an “objective” reproduction method and its integration in the discipline Art History, more than 6 decades after its invention, and only after overcoming various forms of resistance and controversial discussions. The arguments against introducing photography were dominated by the criticism of the industrializing of pictorial production, as well as the fear of losing the aura of the original. Exactly how the technical reproduction changed the habits and methods of seeing pictures, alone in terms of quantity and therefore quality, remained unknown, at that time. Only after the Natural Sciences awarded the media Photography its objective quality, could it assert itself into the work of Art Historians. Bruno Mayer As the Art Historian Bruno Mayer presented a technical apparatus called a Skioptikon at the Art Historians Congress in 1873 in Vienna, his slide projector was gazed at with curiosity. It required an Art Historian with the prestige of Herman Grimm, since 1873 first full Professor for Art History in Berlin, to assist the Skiopikon in 1900, to general recognition. Grimm compared the Skioptikon to the natural scientists microscope, and regarded it as method of testing the quality of an artwork. He heralded the possibility, with help of the photoE -L E A R N IN G . E -C O L L A B O R A T IO N From strategic