Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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PAPERS: From Histories to Materials: Aesthetic and Conceptual Approaches to Sustainability, Additive Manufacturing, and Watermarking Location: Appleton Tower, LT1 Zoom Link Session Chair: Maria Maclennan, The University of Edinburgh Session Chair: Roberta Bernabei, Loughborough University | |
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Balancing aesthetics and protection: How digital artists navigate structural inequities through aesthetic watermarking School of Design, Hunan University, China Online presentations of digital art place artists in an ongoing trade-off between gaining exposure and protecting copyright, one that current platforms inadequately support. As a result, artists often rely on aesthetic watermarks, yet how they manage this balance remains underexplored. In this study, we conducted a co-creation workshop with 18 digital artists and examined how they design aesthetic watermarks in practice. Analysis reveals three key concerns shaping their decisions: aesthetic integrity, semantic fidelity, and protective functionality. Participants struggled to manage the tension between protection and artistic completeness, while also expressing growing concerns about the security of their work, facing rapid AI advancement. These design choices reveal how artists are forced to compensate for gaps in platform governance and technical systems through their own effort. We argue that copyright protection should move beyond technical solutions toward institutional redesign that empowers artists and restores dignity within the digital art ecosystem. View Paper: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2128
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