Tuesday, October 2, 2007
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So in reading a catalog of Paul Pfeiffer (the purchase of which was a result of the fabulous Symposium Books in Providence) I came across this quote:
This lead me to think about Interactivity in Art. Interactivity in art is something that I have a very hard time with, and yes all art is interactive in some way, but I am talking about the stuff that asks you to play with to make it do something. And it might be in that relationship that I have a problem. As a viewer I have a hard time engaging an interactive work with the same sobriety that I tend to approach non-interactive objects or installation. As soon a person is asked to do something with a work of art a whole slew of problems can (and do) come up. The user interface begins to take a front row to the content. Since that is a person's primary level of communication with work of art, it will be the thing that makes the first impact, and thus the most significant one. Now, I think an interactive work can be successful when the method of interaction is so smooth and seamless that it manages to disappear. But then the temptation is to create something so slick and seamless that everybody stands around and says "Gee Whiz, that is slick" and again the attention is drawn away from the actual work of art.
I suppose then the challenge is to find something that treads a middle ground. A solution perhaps is to employ methods that are extremely familiar and are part of our social context. On a small scale, putting on headphones. While a very low level of interactivity, and perhaps it isn't even a from of interactivity, it requires the viewer to perform an action. Headphones can be used quite fluidly, they are not gimmicky, they are not intrusive, and they are very familiar.
A method that follows a similar model has a greater chance of succeeding.
Another problem I think I have with interactivity in Art is that the viewer is now positioned with a set of options. With a painting, you have very few options 1) Look At it, 2) Don't Look at it. With an interactive piece the viewer now has to choose what to do. Since there is that choice, the authority of the author and the intent of the author come into question.
There are many other problems that I have with interactive art, and I am sure my opinions will continue to develop over time. It may be that I simply have too narrow of a vision of what interactivity in art is. We shall see.
"I've often thought of making artwork in terms of providing an entry point for the viewer. How to draw the viewer into a dialogue? That's the challenge every creative person has to face: that there are things you want to say and do, and you have to find a way to say them in the idiom of your time and place. The work can't exist outside a given context. So there's a labor involved to make sense of your relationship to the conditions and constraints you live in . It seems to me to be a labor of translation, or mediation."This is a constant challenge, especially in Digital Media/New Media. Work that can be so technical and so wrapped up in its own technicalness that it pushes the viewer out.
This lead me to think about Interactivity in Art. Interactivity in art is something that I have a very hard time with, and yes all art is interactive in some way, but I am talking about the stuff that asks you to play with to make it do something. And it might be in that relationship that I have a problem. As a viewer I have a hard time engaging an interactive work with the same sobriety that I tend to approach non-interactive objects or installation. As soon a person is asked to do something with a work of art a whole slew of problems can (and do) come up. The user interface begins to take a front row to the content. Since that is a person's primary level of communication with work of art, it will be the thing that makes the first impact, and thus the most significant one. Now, I think an interactive work can be successful when the method of interaction is so smooth and seamless that it manages to disappear. But then the temptation is to create something so slick and seamless that everybody stands around and says "Gee Whiz, that is slick" and again the attention is drawn away from the actual work of art.
I suppose then the challenge is to find something that treads a middle ground. A solution perhaps is to employ methods that are extremely familiar and are part of our social context. On a small scale, putting on headphones. While a very low level of interactivity, and perhaps it isn't even a from of interactivity, it requires the viewer to perform an action. Headphones can be used quite fluidly, they are not gimmicky, they are not intrusive, and they are very familiar.
A method that follows a similar model has a greater chance of succeeding.
Another problem I think I have with interactivity in Art is that the viewer is now positioned with a set of options. With a painting, you have very few options 1) Look At it, 2) Don't Look at it. With an interactive piece the viewer now has to choose what to do. Since there is that choice, the authority of the author and the intent of the author come into question.
There are many other problems that I have with interactive art, and I am sure my opinions will continue to develop over time. It may be that I simply have too narrow of a vision of what interactivity in art is. We shall see.