“Lviv Interactive” and Exploring Artists’ Spaces on a Digital Map

The paper discusses the utilization of digital maps and an encyclopediaplatform, hosted by the Center for Urban History in Lviv, to delve intothe history of artistic milieus and practices within the spatial context of Lvivduring the late 1980s. The digital project’s objective was to present the livesand artistic practices of alternative artists in Lviv through various mediumssuch as video walks, stories, digitized collections, analytical texts, and a digitalmap. By combining visual anthropology, art history, urban studies, and oralhistory through the Lviv Interactive platform and digital storytelling tools likeArcGIS and Storymaps, the project addressed the question: How did the cityshape contemporary art in Lviv? The authors argue that integrating digital tools,web interfaces, and established academic concepts in our daily lives representsthe emergence of digital history, a convergence that scholars employ to interpretour surroundings. However, the concept of a purely digital history may only materialize when our cognitive abilities are digitized, potentially merging withthe domain of artificial intelligence rather than traditional analog historians.The experiences and uncertainties encountered during the City and Art onthe Edge project further reinforced the notion of digital hermeneutics as anintermediary state, emphasizing the inherent tensions between the tangibleanalog world and the digital realm.