Curating in the Digital World: Talk with Robert Storr and Alex May

Alex May joined Robert Storr at Chelsea College of Arts on 13 July 2015 for Curating in the Digital World, an informal public discussion about how digital art changes the role of the curator. Framed around the rapid transformation of art production, experience, and circulation in the digital age, the event focused on what it means to exhibit, collect, and preserve works that depend on evolving technologies.

The discussion mattered because it moved beyond the idea of digital art as a new category of objects and instead addressed the institutional pressures it creates. Works built through code, networks, projection, interactivity, or time-based systems often resist the assumptions that shaped more traditional curatorial models. That makes curation a question not just of display, but of maintenance, interpretation, and long-term survival.

For May, this was closely tied to the wider practice. His work repeatedly depends on custom software, projection, performance, and unstable technical environments, so the question of how digital art is framed and preserved is not abstract. Speaking alongside Storr placed those concerns in a broader art-world context and made clear that digital practice changes not only how art is made, but how institutions have to think about care, access, and continuity.