Interactive Contemporary Art

Audience participation has polarized recent debates about contemporary art. This collection of essays sheds new light on the political, ethical and aesthetic potential of participatory artworks and tests the very latest theoretical approaches to this subject. Internationally renowned art historians, curators and artists analyze the impact of collaborative aesthetics on personal and social identity, concepts of the artist, the ontology of art and the role of museums in contemporary society. Essential reading for students and specialists, Interactive Contemporary Art offers a vital critical evaluation of interactivity in contemporary art.

What is interactive art? Is this a genre? A medium? An art movement? Must a work be physically active to be classified as such, or do we interact when we sense and make sense? Is a switch-throw or link-click enough - I do this, and that happens - or must subjects and objects be confused over time? Is interaction multiple in its engagements (relational), or a one-to-one reaction (programmed)? Are interactive designs somehow more democratic and individualized than others, or is that merely a commercial strategy to sell products and ideas? This book argues that interactive art frames moving-thinking-feeling as embodiment; the body is addressed as it is formed, and in relation. Interactive installations amplify how the body's inscriptions, meanings, and matters unfold out, while the world's sensations, concepts, and matters enfold in. Interactive artwork creates situations that enhance, disrupt, and alter experience and action in ways that call attention to our varied relationships with and as both structure and matter. Nathaniel Stern's inspirational book, Interactive Art and Embodiment, outlines how new media has the ability to intervene in, and challenge, not only the construction of bodies and identities, but also the ongoing and emergent processes of embodiment, as they happen. It includes immersive descriptions of a significant number of interactive artworks and over 40 colour images. The theorists, artists, practitioners and curators discussed in this text include Brian Massumi, Christiane Paul, Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham, Kelli Fuery, Theodore Watson, William Kentridge, Char Davies, Stelarc, Janet Cardiff, Carlo Zanni, Tero Saarinen, Karen Barad, Daniel Rozin, Richard Schechner, Nicole Ridgway, Rebecca Schneider, Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, VALIE EXPORT, The Guerrilla Girls, Tegan Bristow, Brian Knep, Anna Munster, Zach Lieberman, Golan Levin, Simon Penny, Camille Utterback, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Millefiore Effect, Nick Crossley, Mathieu Briand, Scott Snibbe, David Rokeby, José Gil, Erin Manning, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Norah Zuniga Shaw Contents Acknowledgments Series Foreword Introduction: Art Philosophy Chapter 1: Digital is as Digital Does Chapter 2: The Implicit Body as Performance Chapter 3: A Critical Framework for Interactive Art Chapter 4: Body-Language Chapter 5: Social-Anatomies Chapter 6: Flesh-Space Chapter 7: Implicating Art Works In Production: Companion Chapter Bibliography Index

Audience participation has polarized recent debates about contemporary art. This collection of essays sheds new light on the political, ethical and aesthetic potential of participatory artworks and tests the very latest theoretical approaches to this subject. Internationally renowned art historians, curators and artists analyze the impact of collaborative aesthetics on personal and social identity, concepts of the artist, the ontology of art and the role of museums in contemporary society. Essential reading for students and specialists, Interactive Contemporary Art offers a vital critical evaluation of interactivity in contemporary art.

An art-historical perspective on interactive media art that provides theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and analyzing digital art. Since the 1960s, artworks that involve the participation of the spectator have received extensive scholarly attention. Yet interactive artworks using digital media still present a challenge for academic art history. In this book, Katja Kwastek argues that the particular aesthetic experience enabled by these new media works can open up new perspectives for our understanding of art and media alike. Kwastek, herself an art historian, offers a set of theoretical and methodological tools that are suitable for understanding and analyzing not only new media art but also other contemporary art forms. Addressing both the theoretician and the practitioner, Kwastek provides an introduction to the history and the terminology of interactive art, a theory of the aesthetics of interaction, and exemplary case studies of interactive media art. Kwastek lays the historical and theoretical groundwork and then develops an aesthetics of interaction, discussing such aspects as real space and data space, temporal structures, instrumental and phenomenal perspectives, and the relationship between materiality and interpretability. Finally, she applies her theory to specific works of interactive media art, including narratives in virtual and real space, interactive installations, and performance—with case studies of works by Olia Lialina, Susanne Berkenheger, Stefan Schemat, Teri Rueb, Lynn Hershman, Agnes Hegedüs, Tmema, David Rokeby, Sonia Cillari, and Blast Theory.

Play art' or interactive art is becoming a central concept in the contemporary art world, disrupting the traditional role of passive observance usually assumed by audiences, allowing them active participation. The work of 'play' artists - from Carsten Holler's 'Test Site' at the Tate Modern to Gabriel Orozco's 'Ping Pond Table' - must be touched, influenced and experienced; the gallery-goer is no longer a spectator but a co-creator. Time to Play explores the role of play as a central but neglected concept in aesthetics and a model for ground-breaking modern and postmodern experiments that have intended to blur the boundary between art and life. Moving freely between disciplines, Katarzyna Zimna links the theory and history of 20th and 21st century art with ideas developed within play, game and leisure studies, and the philosophical theories of Kant, Gadamer and Derrida, to critically engage with current discussion on the role of the artist, viewers, curators and their spaces of encounter. She combines a consideration of the philosophical implications of play with the examination of how it is actually used in modern and postmodern art - looking at Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Relational Aesthetics. Focusing mainly on process-based art, this bold book proposes a fresh approach - reaching beyond classical cultural theories of play.

Interactive installation art, an important branch of new media art, generates with the development of technology and art. This book includes typical interactive installation projects, and pays more attention to how designers express and convey messages in a variety of ways. Instead of accepting information passively, audience will actively participate in the art. According to different interactive methods, this book is divided into two parts: immersive installation and experimental installation. With 3D rendering images, photographs and video of projects, this book will explain what the unity of art and technology is and how to combine each other together. It is absolutely a high-quality and practical guidebook to interactive installation art design.1. This book includes typical projects from global excellent design agencies, like teamLab, Dem, Random International, which witness the recent development of interactive installation art. With designers' detailed introductions, this book systematically concludes their design philosophy and methods.2. Including a companion DVD helps readers understand the interactivity of installations more clearly. 3. Combing theory and cases, this book analyzes how designers create more human-centered installation art with new materials and technology. --

This book is concerned with emergence, interaction, art and computing. It introduces a new focus for emergence in interactive art: the emergent experience. Emergence literature is discussed and an organising framework, the Taxonomy of Emergence in Interactive Art (TEIA) is provided together with case studies of digital, interactive art systems that facilitate emergence. Evidence from evaluations of people interacting with the works is analysed using the TEIA. Artworks from across the world are also reviewed to further illustrate the potential for emergence. Interactive art is, itself, still a young domain where audience influence, or interaction with the work is a defining aspect. Emergence in Interactive Art explores the rich opportunities for interactive experiences of digital art systems that are provided by looking through a ‘lens’ of emergence. And what better way to explore these potentials than through the open-ended domain of emergence, with its inherent affinity to the natural world? Through an integrated approach of practice, research and theory this book reveals design and analytical insights relating to emergence, interaction and interactive art to benefit artists, researchers and designers alike.

From media art archeology to contemporary interaction design - the term interface culture is based on a vivid and ongoing discourse in the fields of interactive art, interaction design, game design, tangible interfaces, auditory interfaces, fashionable technologies, wearable devices, intelligent ambiences, sensor technologies, telecommunication and new experimental forms of human-machine, human-human and machine-machine interactions and the cultural discourse surrounding them. This book's aim is to give an overview of the current state of interactive art and interface technology as well as an outlook on new forms of hybridization in art, media, scientific research and every-day media applications.