Interactive art
Encyclopedia
Interactive art is a form of installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

-based art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.

Works of this kind of art frequently feature computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s and sensors to respond to motion, heat, meteorological changes or other types of input their makers programmed them to respond to. Most examples of virtual Internet art
Internet art
Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...

 and electronic art
Electronic art
Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media or, more broadly, refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music...

 are highly interactive. Sometimes, visitors are able to navigate through a hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...

 environment; some works accept textual or visual input from outside; sometimes an audience can influence the course of a performance
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 or can even participate in it.

Though some of the earliest examples of interactive art have been dated back to the 1920s, most digital art didn’t make its official entry into the world of art until the late 1990s. Since this debut, countless museums and venues have been increasingly accommodating digital and interactive art into their productions. This budding genre of art is continuing to grow and evolve in a somewhat rapid manner through internet social sub-culture on one hand, and large scale urban installations on the other hand.

Interactivity in art

Interactive art is a genre of art in which the viewers participate in some way by providing an input in order to determine the outcome. Unlike traditional art forms wherein the interaction of the spectator is merely a mental event, interactivity allows for various types of navigation, assembly, and/or contribution to an artwork, which goes far beyond purely psychological activity. Interactivity as a medium produces meaning.

Interactive art installations are generally computer-based and frequently rely on sensors, which gauge things such as temperature, motion, proximity, and other meteorological phenomena that the maker has programmed in order to elicit responses based on participant action. In interactive artworks, both the audience and the machine work together in dialogue in order to produce a completely unique artwork for each audience to observe. However, not all observers visualize the same picture. Because it is interactive art, each observer makes their own interpretation of the artwork and it may be completely different than another observer's views.

Interactive art can be distinguished from Generative art
Generative art
Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes....

 in that it constitutes a dialogue between the artwork and the participant; specifically, the participant has agency, or the ability, even in an unintentional manner, to act upon the artwork and is furthermore invited to do so within the context of the piece, i.e. the work affords the interaction. More often, we can consider that the work takes its visitor into account. In an increasing number of cases an installation can be defined as a responsive environment, especially those created by architects and designers. By contrast, Generative Art, which may be interactive, but not responsive per se, tends to be a monologue - the artwork may change or evolve in the presence of the viewer, but the viewer may not be invited to engage in the reaction but merely enjoy it.

History

According to the new media artist and theorist Maurice Benayoun
Maurice Benayoun
Maurice Benayoun is a French pioneer new-media artist and theorist based in Paris. His work employs various media, including video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale urban art installations and interactive exhibitions.-Biography:Born in Mascara,...

, the first piece of interactive art should be the work done by Parrhasius during his art contest with Zeuxis described by Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, in the fifth century B.C. when Zeuxis tried to unveil the painted curtain. The work takes its meaning from Zeuxis gesture and wouldn’t exist without it. Zeuxis, by its gesture, became part of Parrhasius’ work. This shows that the specificity of interactive art resides often less in the use of computers than in the quality of proposed “situations” and the “Other’s” involvement in the process of sensemaking
Sensemaking
Sensemaking is the process by which people give meaning to experience. While this process has been studied by other disciplines under other names for centuries, the term "sensemaking" has primarily marked three distinct but related research areas since the 1970s: Sensemaking was introduced to...

. Nevertheless computers and real time computing made the task easier and opened the field of virtuality- the potential emergence of unexpected (although possibly pre-written) futures- to contemporary arts.

Some of the earliest examples of interactive art were created as early as the 1920s. An example is Marcel Duchamp’s piece named Rotary Glass Plates. The artwork required the viewer to turn on the machine and stand at a distance of one meter.

The present idea of interactive art began to flourish more in the 1960s for partly political reasons. At the time, many people found it inappropriate for artists to carry the only creative power within their works. Those artists who held this view wanted to give the audience their own part of this creative process. Aside from this “political” view, it was also current wisdom that interaction and engagement had a positive part to play within the creative process.

In the 1970s artists began to use new technology such as video and satellites to experiment with live performances and interactions through the direct broadcast of video and audio.

Interactive art became a large phenomenon due to the advent of computer based interactivity in the 1990s. Along with this came a new kind of art-experience. Audience and machine were now able to more easily work together in dialogue in order to produce a unique artwork for each audience. In the late 1990s, museums and galleries began increasingly incorporating the art form in their shows, some even dedicating entire exhibitions to it. This continues today and is only expanding due to increased communications through digital media.

A hybrid emerging discipline drawing on the combined interests of specific artists and architects has been created in the last 10–15 years. Disciplinary boundaries have blurred, and significant number of architects and interactive designers have joined electronic artists in the creation of new, custom-designed interfaces and evolutions in techniques for obtaining user input (such as dog vision, alternative sensors, voice analysis, etc.); forms and tools for information display (such as video projection, lasers, robotic and mechatronic actuators, led lighting etc.); modes for human-human and human-machine communication (through the Internet and other telecommunications networks); and to the development of social contexts for interactive systems (such as utilitarian tools, formal experiments, games and entertainment, social critique, and political liberation).

Forms

There are many different forms of interactive art. Such forms range from interactive dance, music, and even drama. New technology, primarily computer systems and computer technology, have enabled a new class of interactive art. Examples of such interactive art are installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

, interactive architecture
Interactive architecture
Interactive Architecture signifies a field of architecture in which objects and space have the ability to meet changing needs with respect to evolving individual, social, and environmental demands...

 and interactive film.

Impact

The aesthetic impact of interactive art is more profound than expected.

Supporters of more “traditional” contemporary art saw, in the use of computers, a way to balance artistic deficiencies, some other consider that the art is not anymore in the achievement of the formal shape of the work but in the design of the rules that determine the evolution of the shape according to the quality of the dialogue.

Interactive art events and places

There are number of globally significant festivals and exhibitions of interactive and media arts. Prix Ars Electronica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...

 is a major yearly competition and exhibition that gives awards to outstanding examples of (technology-driven) interactive art. Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group in Graphics (SIGGRAPH)
SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...

, DEAF Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Transmediale Germany, FILE - Electronic Language International Festival
Electronic Language International Festival
FILE - Electronic Language International Festival is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three different cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has also participated in others events around the world...

 Brazil, and AV Festival England, are among the others.

CAiiA, Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, first established by Roy Ascott
Roy Ascott
Roy Ascott is a British artist and theorist, who works with cybernetics and telematics. He is President of the Planetary Collegium.- Biography :...

 in 1994 at the University of Wales, Newport
University of Wales, Newport
The University of Wales, Newport is a university based in Newport, South Wales. The university has two campuses; Caerleon on the northern outskirts of the city and a £35 million campus on the banks of the River Usk in Newport city centre opened in 2011...

, and later in 2003 as the Planetary Collegium
Planetary Collegium
The Planetary Collegium is an international platform for research in art, technology and consciousness, with its hub based in the University of Plymouth, with linked centers in Zurich and Milan...

, was the first doctoral and post doc research center to be established specifically for research in the interactive art field.

Interactive architecture
Interactive architecture
Interactive Architecture signifies a field of architecture in which objects and space have the ability to meet changing needs with respect to evolving individual, social, and environmental demands...

 has now been installed on and as part of building facades, in foyers, museums and large scale public spaces, including airports, in a number of global cities. A number of leading museums, for example, the National Gallery, Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

, Victoria & Albert Museum and Science Museum
Science museum
A science museum or a science centre is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 (to cite the leading UK museums active in this field) were early adoptors in the field of interactive technologies, investing in educational resources, and more latterly, in the creative use of MP3 players for visitors. In 2004 the Victoria & Albert Museum commissioned curator and author Lucy Bullivant to write Responsive Environments (2006), the first such publication of its kind. Interactive designers are frequently commissioned for museum displays; a number specialize in wearable computing.

Venues

  • National Gallery
  • Tate
    Tate
    -Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

  • Victoria & Albert Museum
  • Science Museum
    Science museum
    A science museum or a science centre is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of...

     in London
    London
    London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

  • Prix Ars Electronica
    Prix Ars Electronica
    The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...

  • FILE - Electronic Language International Festival
    Electronic Language International Festival
    FILE - Electronic Language International Festival is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three different cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has also participated in others events around the world...

     (Brazil)
  • AV Festival England

Tools

  • Arduino
    Arduino
    Arduino is an open-source single-board microcontroller, descendant of the open-source Wiring platform, designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open hardware design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR...

     physical computing/electronics toolkit for interactive objects and installations
  • I-CubeX
    I-CubeX
    I-CubeX comprises a system of sensors, actuators and interfaces that are configured by a personal computer. Using MIDI,Bluetooth or the Universal Serial Bus as the basis for all communication, the complexity is managed behind a variety of software tools, including an end-user configuration editor,...

     sensors, actuators and interfaces for interactive media
  • Max/MSP programming language for interactive media
  • Processing (programming language)
    Processing (programming language)
    Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of computer programming in a visual context, and to serve as the foundation for electronic sketchbooks...

     used for many interactive art projects
  • Pure Data
    Pure Data
    Pure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...

     - open source
    Open source
    The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

     programming language for interactive computer music and multimedia works

See also

  • List of interactive artists
  • Art game
    Art game
    An art game or arthouse game is a video game that is designed in such a way as to emphasize art or whose structure is intended to produce some kind of reaction in its audience. Art games typically go out of their way to have a unique, unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty or...

  • Burning Man
    Burning Man
    Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...

  • Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
    Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
    The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is a three-day annual music and arts festival, organized by Goldenvoice and held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Inland Empire's Coachella Valley...

  • Computer-generated art
  • Contextual Theatre
    Contextual Theatre
    Contextual Theatre is a form of theatre and the art of creating a context in which an actor, player or audience is encouraged to suspend their disbelief and feel as if they freely exist within the context. The most common forms of contextual theatre are: theme parks, video games and haunted houses....

  • Electronic art
    Electronic art
    Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media or, more broadly, refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music...

  • Fax art
    Fax art
    Fax art is art specifically designed to be sent or transmitted by a facsimile machine, where the "fax art" is the received "fax". It is also called telecommunications art or telematic art. "Fax art was another means of mediating distances," according to art historians Annmarie Chandler and Norie...

  • Internet art
    Internet art
    Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...

  • Kinetic sculpture
  • New media art
    New media art
    New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...

  • Performance art
    Performance art
    In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

  • Video game art
  • Artmedia
    Artmedia
    Artmedia, Seminar and Laboratory of the Aesthetics of Media and Communication, was one of the first scientific projects concerning the relationship between art, technology, philosophy and aesthetics. It was founded in 1985 at the University of Salerno...


Further reading

  • Frank Popper
    Frank Popper
    Frank Popper is a historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He has been decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government...

    , Art—Action and Participation, New York University Press, 1975
  • Ascott, R.2003. Telematic Embrace: visionary theories of art, technology and consciousness. (Edward A. Shanken
    Edward A. Shanken
    Edward A. Shanken is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental new media art and visual culture. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into six...

    , ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Roy Ascott
    Roy Ascott
    Roy Ascott is a British artist and theorist, who works with cybernetics and telematics. He is President of the Planetary Collegium.- Biography :...

    . 2002. Technoetic Arts (Editor and Korean translation: YI, Won-Kon), (Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University). Yonsei: Yonsei University Press
  • Ascott, R. 1998. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). A. Takada & Y. Yamashita eds. Tokyo: NTT Publishing Co.,Ltd.
  • Barreto, Ricardo and Perissinotto, Paula “the_culture_of_immanence”, in Internet Art. Ricardo Barreto e Paula Perissinotto (orgs.). São Paulo, IMESP, 2002. ISBN 85-7060-038-0.
  • Bullivant, Lucy, Responsive Environments: architecture, art and design: V&A Contemporary, 2006. London:Victoria and Albert Museum. ISBN 1-85177-481-5
  • Bullivant, Lucy, 4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments. London: AD/John Wiley & Sons, 2007. ISBN 978-0470 319116
  • Bullivant, Lucy, 4dspace: Interactive Architecture. London: AD/John Wiley & Sons, 2005. ISBN 0-470-09092-8
  • Fleischmann, Monika and Reinhard, Ulrike (eds.). Digital Transformations - Media Art as at the Interface between Art, Science, Economy and Society online at netzspannung.org, 2004, ISBN 3-934013-38-4
  • Ernest Edmonds, Linda Candy, Mark Fell, Roger Knott, Sandra Pauletto, Alastair Weakley. 2003. Developing Interactive Art Using Visual Programming. In: Constantine Stephanidis & Julie Jacko (Editors), Human-Computer Interaction: Theory and Practice, (Part II). Volume 2. (Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Crete, June 23–27), Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London, June 2003, pp. 1183–1187, ISBN 0-805-849319
  • Ernest Edmonds, Greg Turner, Linda Candy. 2004. Approaches to interactive art systems, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and South East Asia, June 15–18, 2004, Singapore
  • Fleischmann, Monika; Strauss, Wolfgang (eds.) (2001). Proceedings of »CAST01//Living in Mixed Realities« Intl. Conf. On Communication of Art, Science and Technology, Fraunhofer IMK 2001, 401. ISSN 1618–1379 (Print), ISSN 1618–1387 (Internet).
  • Oliver Grau
    Oliver Grau
    Oliver Grau is a German art historian and media theoretician with a focus on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance.-Works:...

     Virtual Art, from Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2004, pp. 237–240, ISBN 0262572230
  • Christiane Paul
    Christiane Paul (curator)
    Christiane Paul is a scholar in the field of digital art and an historian of art and technology. She is Professor of Visual Arts at The New School and author of the seminal book Digital Art. Dr...

     (2003). Digital Art' (World of Art series). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20367-9
  • Peter Weibel
    Peter Weibel
    Peter Weibel is an artist, curator and theoretician.Raised in Upper Austria he started to study French and cinematography in Paris...

     and Shaw, Jeffrey, Future Cinema, MIT Press 2003, pp. 472,572-581, ISBN 0262692864
  • Wilson, Steve, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology ISBN 0-262-23209-X
  • Edward A. Shanken
    Edward A. Shanken
    Edward A. Shanken is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental new media art and visual culture. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into six...

    , Art and Electronic Media. London: Phaidon, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7148-4782-5

External links

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