Research

Oliver Grau was appointed in 2005 the first Chair Professor of Image Science in the German speaking countries and Head of the Center for Image Science at the Danube University Krems. He was invited to more than 220 lectures and has presented keynotes at conferences worldwide, including the culture program of the Olympic Games in Beijing and the G-20 Summit Meeting Seoul. He has received several awards and his publications are translated in twelve languages (among them Korean and Chinese). His H-Index is 11.

His main research is in the history of media art, immersive images, and images and emotions, as well as the history, idea and culture of telepresence and artificial life. Grau's book “Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion”, MIT Press (2003 book of the month Scientific American and received more than 50 international reviews), offered for the first time a historic comparison and evolution in image-viewer theory of immersion as well as a systematic analysis of the triad of artist, artwork and beholder under the conditions of digital art. The research is based on a novel theory of relative dependencies of new immersive media and the media competencies of its users within an evolutionary model (Grau 2001). Grau has conceived new scientific tools for image science/digital humanities, he directed the project "Immersive Art" of the German Research Foundation (DFG) developing the first international archive for digital art (DVA, since 1999). Since 2000 the DVA is the first online archive to regularly stream video documentations. Since 2005 Grau is also head of the database of Goettweig’s Graphic Collection, Austria's largest private graphic collection that contains 30.000 works, from Albrecht Duerer to Gustav Klimt.