Chambre a Musique CCL 1983-nb02-Sedano-de-Ory

Interactive art is a form of

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way. Works of this kind of art frequently feature

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

interfaces Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Int ...

and sometimes

sensors A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...

to respond to motion, heat, meteorological changes or other types of input their makers have programmed the works to respond to. Most examples of virtual

Internet art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phy ...

and

electronic art Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it 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 elec ...

are highly interactive. Sometimes, visitors are able to navigate through a

hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...

environment; some works accept textual or visual input from outside; sometimes an audience can influence the course of a

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

or can even participate in it. Some other interactive artworks are considered as immersive as the quality of interaction involve all the spectrum of surrounding stimuli.

Virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), edu ...

environments like works by

Maurice Benayoun Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) (born 29 March 1957) is a French new-media artist, curator, and theorist based in Paris and Hong Kong. His work employs various media, including video, computer graphics, immersive virtual reality, th ...

and Jeffrey Shaw are highly interactive as the work the spectators – Maurice Benayoun call them "visitors", Miroslaw Rogala calls them (v)users,

Char Davies Char Davies (born 1954) is a Canadian contemporary artist known for creating immersive virtual reality (VR) artworks. A founding director of Softimage, Co, she is considered a world leader in the field of virtual reality and a pioneer of bio-fee ...

"immersants" – interact with take all their fields of perception. Though some of the earliest examples of interactive art have been dated back to the 1920s, most

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various name ...

didn't make its official entry into the world of art until the late 1990s.Paul, C: ''Digital Art'', page 67. Thames & Hudson Inc, 2003. 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, as well as through large scale urban installations.

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.Muller, L, Edmonds, E, Connel, M: "Living laboratories for interactive art", ''CoDesign'', 2(4):3 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 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 from another observer's views. Interactive art can be distinguished from

generative art Generative art refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that w ...

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 An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and

designers A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

. By contrast,

Generative Art Generative art refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that w ...

, 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

, the first piece of interactive art should be the work done by Parrhasius during his art contest with Zeuxis described by

Pliny Pliny may refer to: People * Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), ancient Roman nobleman, scientist, historian, and author of ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Pliny's Natural History'') * Pliny the Younger (died 113), ancient Roman statesman, orator, w ...

, 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 or sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to their collective experiences. It has been defined as "the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing" ( Weick, Sutcliffe, ...

. 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 Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

’s piece named ''Rotary Glass Plates''. The artwork required the viewer to turn on the machine and stand at a distance of one meter in order to see an optical illusion. 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. An early example is found in the early 1960s "change-paintings" of

Roy Ascott Roy Ascott FRSA (born 26 October 1934) is a British artist, who works with cybernetics and telematics on an art he calls technoetic by focusing on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness. Since the 1960s, Ascott ...

, about whom

Frank Popper Frank Popper (17 April 1918 – 12 July 2020) was a Czech-born French-British historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He was decorated with the medal of the L ...

has written: "Ascott was among the first artists to launch an appeal for total spectator participation". Aside from the “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 Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...

and

satellites A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotop ...

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 A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

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 Voice analysis is the study of speech sounds for purposes other than linguistic content, such as in speech recognition. Such studies include mostly medical analysis of the voice (phoniatrics), but also speaker identification. More controversiall ...

, etc.); forms and tools for information display (such as

video projection A video projector is an image projector that receives a video signal and projects the corresponding image on a projection screen using a lens system. Video projectors use a very bright ultra-high-performance lamp (a special mercury arc lamp), Xe ...

lasers A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...

robotic Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrate ...

and

mechatronic Mechatronics engineering also called mechatronics, is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the integration of mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering systems, and also includes a combination of robotics, electroni ...

actuators An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving and controlling a mechanism or system, for example by opening a valve. In simple terms, it is a "mover". An actuator requires a control device (controlled by control signal) an ...

, led lighting etc.); modes for human-human and human-machine communication (through the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

and other

telecommunications networks A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, mess ...

); 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 is 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 ...

interactive architecture Interactive architecture refers to the branch of architecture which deals with buildings, structures, surfaces and spaces that are designed to change, adapt and reconfigure in real-time response to people (their activity, behaviour and movements), ...

interactive film An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, ...

, and

interactive storytelling Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (a ...

. Since there is a presumed participant or agent in interactivity, interactive art has a deep connection with performance art.

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.

Events and places

There are number of globally significant festivals and exhibitions of interactive and media arts.

Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria). ...

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), DEAF Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Transmediale Germany, FILE - Electronic Language International Festival Brazil, and AV Festival England, are among the others. CAiiA,

Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts The Planetary Collegium (a.k.a. CAiiA / Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Integrative Arts) is an international transcultural and transdisciplinary new media art educational research platform that promotes on the doctorate level the integration of ar ...

, first established by

in 1994 at the University of Wales, Newport, and later in 2003 as the

Planetary Collegium The Planetary Collegium (a.k.a. CAiiA / Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Integrative Arts) is an international transcultural and transdisciplinary new media art educational research platform that promotes on the doctorate level the integration of a ...

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

Interactive architecture Interactive architecture refers to the branch of architecture which deals with buildings, structures, surfaces and spaces that are designed to change, adapt and reconfigure in real-time response to people (their activity, behaviour and movements), ...

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 The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, and

Science Museum A science museum 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 ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

(to cite the leading UK museums active in this field) were early adopters in the field of interactive technologies, investing in educational resources, and more latterly, in the creative use of

MP3 players A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

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.

Tools

Wiring Electrical wiring is an electrical installation of cabling and associated devices such as switches, distribution boards, sockets, and light fittings in a structure. Wiring is subject to safety standards for design and installation. Allowable ...

– the first

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

electronics prototyping platform composed of a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

, an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

(IDE), and a single-board micro controller. It was developed starting in 2003 by Hernando Barragán and was popularized under the name of

Arduino Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under ...

– physical computing/electronics toolkit for interactive objects and installations * I-CubeX – sensors, actuators and interfaces for interactive media *

Max/MSP Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by composers, per ...

– programming language for interactive media *

Processing (programming language) Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programmi ...

– used for many interactive art projects *

OpenFrameworks openFrameworks is an open source toolkit designed for creative coding founded by Zachary Lieberman, Theo Watson and Arturo Castro. OpenFrameworks is written in C++ and built on top of OpenGL. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, ...

–

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

tool similar to Processing, used for many interactive projects *

Pure Data Pure Data (Pd) 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 d ...

–

programming language for interactive computer music and multimedia works * TouchDesigner – a node based

visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS) is any programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements ''graphically'' rather than by specifying them ''textually''. A VPL ...

for real time interactive

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

content

Interactivity in art

History

Forms

Impact

Events and places

Tools

See also

Notes

Further reading