Experiments:

Interactive art has come a long way and as computers keep getting faster, smaller, more efficient — interactive art will become further more important.

What Is Interactive Art?

Wikipedia defines Interactive Art as a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Think of the artwork as a circuit. The viewer is the all-important switch.

The immediate appeal of it is obvious. From the surface, an interactive art piece can seem closer to a video game than our notions of art. But therein lies it’s magic. See every good interactive art piece is solidly based in concept. But the unique thing about interactive art is that the very interaction could embody the concept in a way artworks could not before.

Let’s look at one example to illustrate. Boundary Functions by Scott Snibbe is a seminal piece of interactive art. Here is an abridged version of the notes from the video

(Sidenote: Scott is the also mastermind behind Biophilioa by Bjork)

We think of personal space as something that belongs entirely to ourselves. However, Boundary Functions shows us that personal space exists only in relation to others and changes without our control.

Boundary Functions is a set of lines projected from overhead onto the floor, dividing people in the gallery from one another. When there is one person on its floor, there is no response. When two are present, a single line cuts between them bisecting the floor, and dynamically changing as they move. With more than two people, the floor divides into cellular regions, each with the quality that all space within it is closer to the person inside than any one else.

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The piece itself is brilliant in how it encourages people to step on and ‘play’ with the design. But take a closer look and within the very programing of the interaction is embodied the concept of personal space — Scott’s inspiration for the piece.

In the best interactive art, it’s the actual interaction that is the thing of beauty. The device to achieve the purpose of the art (or at least set it up for the spectator to complete). The programing, the sensor design, instead of being tools — the colors on the easel, the canvas or the paintbrush — become the actual painting.

Context?

See I come from a middle class urban Indian family. What that means is while I had the fortune of being exposed to a lot of stimuli as a child — a lot of information was being peddled to us second hand. I learnt all kinds of weird, flawed and outright wrong music theory, and in fact spent much of my initial formal music studies undoing these.

As far as art goes, our exposure was limited. Very limited. Aside from the art fair trip a school may organize once in a wild decade, art was resigned to a past time — a hobby for bored housewives and restless children. Art History, Art education was dead on arrival. In our schooling system, if you were smart enough to get A’s you were going to be studying sciences, (the system would pretend to be humane in giving a choice between engineering and medicine) B’s? You are in the commerce section preparing for business administration. C’s and D’s? ART/Humanities.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why India only produces certain kinds of professionals.

Interaction to art is what slam is to poetry

From that perspective, there is more to the appeal and purpose of interactive art that meets the eye. Interactive art, much like slam poetry, breaks down the walls that exist for us folks who didn’t get the access pass as kids. Pulling along on the slam poetry comparison, slam brings poetry to the masses. Scoffing at the notions of old, it frees the art form from the elite, brings it to a bar (!), and honest people from everywhere pour out their feelings. No-one cares about your rhyme scheme if you can make them cry.

What’s going to change?

Interactive Art bridges science and art, blends technology with humanities. It breaks down the false distinctions between disciplines, encouraging lateral thinking between disciplines. It will inspire in it’s fold artists from all kinds of backgrounds, and will need no validation from the erstwhile gatekeepers

Interactive Art will be that balm for the masses in the coming world.
It will be the kind of art you don’t need a guide to understand.
It will make you feel.

Isn’t that the point of it all?

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