What is DETAIL?
The Digital Exhibitions Toolkit and Art Installation Launcher (DETAIL) emerged from a recognized need in the digital arts community for accessible tools for presenting digital artwork on digital platforms.
Between 2021 and 2024, the MacKenzie Art Gallery developed DETAIL as a free, open-source resource that builds upon real-world exhibition experiences, both within the Gallery and through partnerships with other organizations. This collection of plug-ins, templates, and workflows facilitates the exhibition of digital art across multiple platforms, from desktop applications to mobile devices, web browsers, and virtual reality environments.
While DETAIL prioritizes digital-first access, its resources readily adapt to in-person interactive experiences. The toolkit aims to make digital art exhibitions more accessible for organizations and curators by providing tested, reliable resources that support various digital art formats. The documentation on this webpage extends beyond being a technical guide for DETAIL: it serves as a reference for understanding the holistic development of digital exhibitions. There are summaries of our iterative process as developers, but we’ve also included reflections from the roles we’ve played as art workers, designers, and as digital artists ourselves.
The following pages outline our decision-making processes when creating digital art exhibitions, providing insight into the toolkit’s development through three pilot projects. In these pages and linked documents we offer practical guidance on using DETAIL’s components, from Unity scripts and prefabs to standalone exhibition-building software.
Our intended audience spans several key groups within the digital arts ecosystem. First, we address fellow digital artists who, like us, often find themselves navigating the dual roles of artist and technical facilitator when participating in exhibitions. We also speak to an emerging category of art worker: the digital technician, whether they are employed by galleries or working independently. Our documentation particularly aims to support curators, drawing from our close collaboration with both the MacKenzie Art Gallery team and three guest curators during our pilot projects. DETAIL strives to facilitate stronger relationships between curators and artists working with digital practices, streamlining the process of creating digital exhibitions for digital platforms.
Beyond practitioners, this document offers insights for audiences, scholars, and critics interested in digital exhibitions. It examines the technical infrastructure supporting digital art presentation, offering a deeper understanding of the forms that contain digital art. With this comprehensive approach, we hope to contribute to the broader discourse around digital art while providing practical tools for its presentation and preservation.
What is a Digital Exhibition?
A digital exhibition, in its broadest sense, showcases artwork through digital platforms. This places digital exhibitions at an intersection of traditional exhibition design, game development, and user experience design.
While each of these fields contributes valuable principles and methodologies, digital exhibitions have emerged as their own distinct form of artistic presentation, one that requires careful consideration of both technological capabilities and audience engagement.
Whether experienced through laptops, phones, or specialized gallery installation hardware, the exhibition exists primarily as a digital experience. This doesn’t mean that such exhibitions can’t have physical components or manifestations in gallery spaces. Rather, it means that the core experience—the primary way audiences engage with the artwork—is conceived and contained within a digital environment. The experience may be digital, but that doesn’t mean that it is attempting to simulate a brick-and-mortar exhibition. The lockdowns of COVID-19 drove many institutions to substitute in-person programming with digital initiatives, inspiring many comments on the unique potential of this medium of the moment. Writing about online exhibitions in mid-2020, Michael Connor, Co-Executive Director at Rhizome, alludes to the potential of exhibiting digital artworks “that appear to be coherent objects [but] are rather the performance of objecthood.” Digital artworks come alive through a combination of hardware, software, user interaction, and network connections. Digital exhibitions are likewise a complex collaboration between artists, developers, and audiences.
Through the exploration of Unity, a cross-platform game engine, we integrated strategies into DETAIL from the world of game design, a field that has negotiated these complex performances between the digital world and its audience for decades. The versatility of Unity enabled us to develop exhibitions for web browsers, mobile devices, virtual reality headsets, and computers, meaning that the chosen platform could be a conscious response to the curatorial vision. In developing DETAIL and its pilot exhibitions, we expressed the unique potential in digital exhibitions to the Gallery’s existing and growing audiences.
Background of Project and Collaborators
The Digital Exhibitions Toolkit and Art Installation Launcher (DETAIL) was developed in response to digital artists seeking more approachable solutions for showcasing their work across digital platforms.
Initially proposed by Gallery staff Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll, the project draws from their experience as digital artists, art workers, and technical collaborators. The goal was to create an accessible resource that would help both artists and institutions navigate the unique challenges of digital exhibition-making. Further development support by Brendy Lehman and organizational partner Hand Eye Society expanded DETAIL’s capacity.
Joined by guest curators Rea McNamara, Katie Micak, and Tina Sauerlaender, DETAIL was forged through substantial, research-driven curatorial pilot projects.
Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund, DETAIL is a toolkit and resource guide that addresses a crucial gap in supporting the diverse art practices of emerging and established artists working at the forefront of digital technologies. This report was authored by Cat Bluemke with input from Jonathan Carroll.
Using This Resource as a Practical Tool
This guide is organized into five sections that progress from broad concepts to specific technical implementation.
Section 2 provides a comprehensive overview of digital exhibition development, covering both high-level production workflows as well as specific platform considerations. Section 3 examines the multiple roles in digital exhibition creation and outlines collaboration strategies and timelines for involving team members. Section 4 presents case studies through the DETAIL pilot projects, demonstrating how we applied the DETAIL resources to curated digital exhibitions. The DETAIL resources are linked in Section 5, which offers technical documentation for creating your own digital exhibitions. Finally, Section 6 provides detailed information about the collaborators who helped shape these exhibitions, including the developers, curators, and artists.
Digital Exhibition Workflows
Developing digital exhibitions requires a structured yet flexible approach, borrowing from both traditional curatorial practices and software development methodologies.
Digital Exhibition Collaborators
In the development of digital exhibitions, it’s important to understand an artist’s relationship with their technology.
Pilot Projects
A critical part of developing DETAIL was the pilot projects. These three digital exhibitions informed the prefabs and templates.