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Mark Olson

Mark J. V. Olson

Assistant Professor of the Practice of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
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Mark Olson

Mark J. V. Olson is Associate Professor of the Practice of Visual & Media Studies at Duke University and a founding member of the Wired! Lab. His research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary entanglements of medical practice and media technologies, as well as on the affordances of emerging technologies for the analysis and exhibition of historical material culture. He is currently collaborating with the Nasher Museum of Art on expanding their engagements with interactive media and developing an infrastructure for constructing immersive virtual exhibition experiences. He also collaborates with Duke’s History of Medicine Collection and Department of Radiology on the micro-CT scanning and digital reconstruction of Duke’s ivory manikin collection.

More broadly, Olson is interested in cultivating literacies in “critical making”—drawing on the critical and analytic repertoires of the theoretical and historical humanities while cultivating a deep understanding of and proficient practice with computational media, from code to circuit design to photogrammetry. A longtime contributor to the field of digital humanities, Olson is the former Director of New Media & Information Technologies for HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Sciences & Technology Advanced Collaboratory) and the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies. He received his MA and PhD in Communication Studies and graduate certificate in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Current Collaborations

Building Duke

Scholarship

Books & Book Chapters

  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Hacking the Humanities: 21st Century Literacies and the ‘Becoming-Other’ of the Humanities.” In Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Utility and Markets, edited by E. Belfiore and A. Upchurch. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. doi:10.1057/9781137361356.

Public-Facing Scholarship

  • Bruzelius, Caroline, Mark J. V. Olson, Guillermo Sapiro, Mariano Tepper. The Lives of Things. Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Fall 2015.
  • McHugh, Julia, and Mark J. V. Olson. Art of the Americas Interactive. Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Winter 2020.

Articles

  • Jaskot, Paul B., Hannah L. Jacobs, Mark Olson, Victoria Szabo, and Edward Triplett. “Shaping the Discipline of Digital Art History: A recap of an advanced summer institute on 3-D and (geo)spatial networks.” The Iris. December 19, 2018. http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/shaping-the-discipline-of-digital-art-history/.
  • Lanzoni, Kristin Huffman, Mark James-Vrooman Olson, and Victoria E. Szabo. “Wired! and Visualizing Venice: Scaling up Digital Art History.” Artl@s Bulletin 4, no. 1 (2015): Article 3.

Presentations

  • Bruzelius, Caroline, Mark J. V. Olson, Donatella Calabi, Andrea Giordano, Victoria E. Szabo. “Visualizing Venice.” Panel presentation at “Florentia Illustrata. Digital Mapping and Techniques of Visualizing the Pre-modern Italian City,” Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Florence, Italy, June 17, 2013.
  • Bruzelius, Caroline, Mark J. V. Olson, Guillermo Sapiro, Mariano Tepper. “The Lives of Things.” Paper presented at NED Talk, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC, October 4, 2015.
  • Dillon, Sheila, Mark J. V. Olson, and Raquel Salvatella de Prada. “Wired! New Representation Technologies for Historical Materials,” Paper presented at C.H.A.T.: A Digital Arts and Humanities Festival, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, February 17, 2010.
  • Jacobs, Hannah L., Paul Jaskot, Mark J. V. Olson, Victoria E. Szabo, and Edward Triplett. “Advanced Topics in Digital Art History: 3D (Geo)Spatial Networks.” Panel presentations at the College Art Association Conference, New York, NY, February 13, 2019.
  • Jacobs, Hannah L., Paul Jaskot, Mark J. V. Olson, Victoria E. Szabo, and Edward Triplett. Presentation at “Coding Our Collection: Datathon,” National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 25, 2019.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Digital Museums, Archives, and Publications.” Panel moderated at the C.H.A.T. Festival 2012: Digital Arts + Humanities, Duke University, Durham, NC, February 7, 2012.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “What is the Wired Lab? – Opportunities for Undergraduates.” Presentation at the First Year Advisors Meeting, Duke University, Durham, NC, September 18, 2012.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Toward a Process Ontology for Digital Archives.” Keynote presented at the North Carolina Preservation Consortium Annual Conference, Raleigh, NC, November 2, 2012.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Digital Technologies and the Social Life of Things: The Wired Lab at Duke University.” Presentation as part of the panel “Connections and Transformations: New Technologies in the Arts and Humanities” at the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference. Greensboro, NC, November 1, 2013.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Mapping Space & Time – Configuring Connections, Trade & Travel, Past & Present.” Roundtable moderated at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC, May 2, 2013.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Storytelling with Sources: Open Source Digital Humanities.” Paper presented at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, June 3, 2014.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Interactive Projection Mapping in the Museum: A Prototype.” Skidmore College. June 23, 2015 Olson, Mark J. V. “Digital Cultural Heritage as Public Humanities Collaboration.” Invited Panel Respondent. Annual Meeting of the College Art Association. Washington, DC. February 4, 2016.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Apostles, Arches, and Anatomical Models.” Public Panel Presentation. The Lives of Cities: New Technologies for Research, Presentation, Training, and Documentation. University of Padua, Italy. November 21, 2017.
  • Olson, Mark J. V. “Advancing Digital Art History through Emerging Computational Paradigms.” Panel Presentation. Annual Meeting of the College Art Association. New York, NY. February 13, 2019.
  • Olson, Mark J. V., and Caroline Bruzelius. “Learning by Making: Digital Methods and the Wired! Experiment at Duke University.” Paper presented at the Inaugural Lecture, Wesleyan Digital and Computational Knowledge Initiative, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, March 6, 2013.
  • Olson, Mark J. V., Elizabeth P. Baltes, Erica Sherman, and Victoria E. Szabo. “Digital Scholarly Communication – Notes from the Wired! Lab for Digital Historical Visualization.” Panel presented at the HASTAC 2011 Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, December 2, 2011.
  • Szabo, Victoria E., Caroline Bruzelius, Maurizio Forte, Copper Frances Giloth, Louis P. Kaplan, Stefania Zardini Lacedelli, Radu Leon, Kerry Loewen, Diana Ndiaye, Mark J. V. Olson. “Digital Cultural Heritage as Public Humanities Collaboration.” Session organized at the College Art Association Conference, Washington, DC, February 4, 2016.
  • Szabo, Victoria E., Caroline Bruzelius, Maurizio Forte, Copper Frances Giloth, Louis P. Kaplan, Stefania Zardini Lacedelli, Radu Leon, Kerry Loewen, Diana Ndiaye, Mark J. V. Olson. “Digital Cultural Heritage as Public Humanities Collaboration.” Session organized at the College Art Association Conference, Washington, DC, February 4, 2016.

Dissertation & Theses

  • DeVeaux, Cyan. “SculptAR: Exploring the Potential of Participatory Augmented Reality and Virtual Experiences in the Contemporary Art Museum.” Undergraduate thesis, Duke University, 2020.
  • Hung, Ju-Yu. “Immersive Projection: A Case Study on the Duke Chapel Interior.” MA thesis, Duke University, 2018. Liu, Chang. “The Alife Bestiary: An AR Object Recognition Project on the Archivolt of Alife.” MA thesis, Duke University, 2019.