Paul B. Jaskot’s “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods” questions not only what research questions are best suited for examination using computational tools but what art history itself is. By placing digital art history in the heritage of social art history, Jaskot presents digital art history as capable of changing the art history field like the interventions of feminist and Marxist critiques that came before it. Digital art history is capable of this change by allowing the examination of understudied and noncanonical areas of the field.

The situating of digital art history within social history is not surprising given Jaskot’s background. Jaskot serves as the Co-Director of the Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab at Duke University. His research centers on architecture and Nazi Germany. His projects primarily use GIS to question assumptions about construction and modernism in the era.

One of the more surprising aspects of Jaskot’s article for me was his expansive definition of social art history. Jaskot acknowledges the historical importance of Marxism and feminism and other -isms in reinvigorating art history towards previously unexamined artworks and ideas, but ultimately presents social art history as any approach that treats art and society as deeply interconnected. That relationship is the backbone and focus of social art history. As someone who does not generally consider themselves a social art historian since I rarely use specific identity or political lens, this definition made me reconsider my assessment of my work. My research and projects are often specifically focused on the relational aspect of art and society, mainly understudied areas of video game culture. Even outside that niche, I have an investigative bend in research (likely from growing up watching so much Law & Order as a kid that I played assistant district attorney the way other kids played house). Investigation is about what lives in the cracks of assumptions and following threads of connection to find new truths.

Jaskot also breaks down four of the most common methods used in digital art history: digital storytelling, text analysis, network analysis, and spatial analysis. Jaskot calls out network and spatial analysis as the most used and most fitted to art historical research (as of 2019 when the article was written). This assessment is because Jaskot focuses on large scale projects as the most fertile ground for any type of digital art history. Jaskot is correct that some illuminating projects have used digital art history tools to see areas that would be very difficult to examine without the distance viewing digital art history methods can provide. Network analysis and geographic mapping certainly can work well to preserve large scale complexity alongside a point of view and thesis.

I would be interested to know how Jaskot feels about more recent digital art history projects that use the same tools to look closer than traditional close looking. These projects present a microscopic version of close looking when compared to the space telescope version of distance viewing Jaskot focuses on in the article. One that came to my mind immediately is the presentation of historical research in video games like Pentiment.

Spoiler note: Pentiment – Examples come from interactions that can happen in the first hour or so of the game. I do not touch on the central plot.

Pentiment by Obsidian Entertainment released in 2022, but it’s status in academic research has only continued to grow in the years between then and now (2026). A point-and-click mystery set in Upper Bavaria in the 16th century, Pentiment is extraordinarily well researched. While series like Assassin’s Creed use extensive research in their creation, they often present this research primarily as world building or in objective sounding codex entries that the player can access in the menu. Pentiment embeds the research across the game at all levels. When picking where the player character, a journeyman manuscript illuminator named Andreas, previously studied, you are given the options of Italy, Basel, or Flanders. Each option provides unique dialogue and skills grounded in the history of those places, but also shows how people of different social classes in a small Alpine village conceptualized those places through specific interactions with Andreas.

The art style of Pentiment is also vital to how the game shares insights into perceptions of status, education, and technological progress. Different characters “speak” (via text bubble) in different lettering styles based on Andreas perception of them. The town printer’s speech appears in upside down blocks before reversing into readable script all at once with a clunk. Monks in the scriptorium speak in a flourished ink style that fills in religiously significant words like “Christ” in red after the rest of the text is written. This was a practice I had no idea existed until I search online to see why the script behaved that way.

Pentiment takes this digital narrative presentation beyond research and into a ludic thesis. There are two notable moments early in the game that showed how a ludic thesis could work that stood out to me.

The first moment is when Andreas discovers that a local shepherd is much more well-read then he thought. The shepherd’s speech rewrites itself from a messy illiterate script used for all the peasants to the clear measured text of the academics and educated. The lettering change subtly communicates how status and education worked in the background of all interactions at the time. The second moment is when retrieving books for the Sister who runs the abbey library. As she discusses the books with Andreas, they enter into the books themselves. Here, she has the freedom to explain the lack of choice for women in their lives. She focuses on how this lack of choice is visible in the treatment of the female characters in the books. Women are presented as inherently wicked or only present to suffer for a male character’s benefit regardless of the books being bawdy popular tales, classical texts, or religious allegory.

As the player experiences these moments as Andreas, there is a clear imperative to move beyond enjoyment of the historical setting to reflection on the perspectives about status, equality, progress, and justice that are raised. Despite not explicitly presenting as digital art history, this expansion of purpose makes Pentiment digital social art history. By using digital storytelling, the creators of Pentiment relinquish some control and clarity of their arguments in favor of allowing the player a much closer look than would be possible normally. The player is able to actually control an artist in the time period and choose how to confront the issues raised in game. Despite how the player decides to play Andreas, the reactions of the other characters and the art choices show the clear point of view and arguments being made. It will be interesting to see how new games approach digital storytelling as more works inspired by Pentiment are released. I also wonder if the game studies practice of presenting research in both traditional modes of scholarship and non-tradition modes like game design will expand to other fields).