Advanced Sculpture, 2014

Project 3: Interactivity
ARTIST RESEARCH

Justin Masterson

Dr. Scheer

Vito Acconci is an American artist whose work spans many mediums.  Working with landscape architecture, installation, design and performance art as well as now poetry Acconci’s work is acclaimed to be unique as well as in some ways innovative.  Most of his early work was socially minded rooted in the ideas of situationism. Situationism is the theory that human behavior is determined by surrounding circumstances rather than by personal qualities. This situationism helped with the interactivity of his artworks with his audience so for this report I will comment on Acconci’s success as a performance artist.

In some ways Vito Acconci's most effective performance art was mainly based on making people uncomfortable.  For instance, for his Following piece he followed people around until they went into a private place. These encounters could last only five minutes or longer.  Acconci documented this through video but also by writing down the encounters and sending the write up to other artists.  Another way Vito Acconci used art to make people uncomfortable was by taking a video of himself rubbing his thighs while saying intimate things about the viewer over and over again.  This makes the viewer of the video become involved with the piece of art in a way that a photograph or still can not.  It takes the viewer and puts them in direct personal reference with Acconci while he talks about thinking specifically of the viewer. The view of the film is so that it looks like the viewer is sitting directly at the other end of the table also adding a very familiar or personal human effect.  The fact that he reiterates himself over and over again makes the viewer think about what he is saying more and more and in this way he brings his art into the viewer's consciousness whether it is welcome or not.  Finally, most famously in his seedbed exhibition, Acconci brings an entire audience to a projected uncomfortable state by playing audio of him masturbating underneath the floor while supposedly being under there himself doing the deed of masturbation.  While the viewer can not even be sure that Acconci is in fact masturbating beneath the floor due to the length of the exhibition, the viewer is forced to entertain the thought that he is which is a socially taboo thought in the least.  Using his performance to specifically make the viewer in the very least minorly uncomfortable he masters interactivity which is something other mediums are not as at ease to achieve.  Acconci studies the human condition and tests what society will take while sometimes making a satire of it.

Bib

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/situationism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Acconci

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/following-piece/

2

Rirkrit Tiravanija is a contemporary artist who thrives in sharing an experience with his audience. He is an artist born in Buenos Aires but now working out of New york as well as Chiang Mi and Berlin. His shared experiences of cooking, eating, reading, or playing music are a central theme of his work.  In this way his art reflects the intentions of that of a true interactive artist.

Tiravanija’s art is all about bringing people together.  In his most famous, breakout exhibition he cooked Pad Tai for his gallery goers.  Nothing about sharing a meal of Pad Tai is traditionally artistic in the object of the art.  However, bringing people together and having a meal that this “culinary” artist produced is a nod to bringing society together for a meal they would have not shared otherwise.  This artist has in ways recreated this exhibition two more times in exhibitions besides New York and ultimately on a larger scale including feeding an entire mess hall. The interaction of the people is what makes the art beautiful.  In this way this type of art is extremely untraditional but still holds merit as a performance piece that is entirely genuine.  This is innovative because it is unique that the gallerygoer can go to a gallery space and specifically interact with the product the artist has made. The feeling of partaking in Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work differs much more from the emptiness of being in an open gallery where the viewer can touch nothing. Where things are meant to be looked at Rirkrit Tiravanija sees things that do not necessarily require that but more require of an understanding that art is an occurrence. Reminiscent of the idea that art is something that happens rather than something that was created once.

In an alternate piece that was minimalist in the sense of using rudimentary objects to construct a pirate radio Rirkrit Tiravanija used the constitution to make a comment on free speech.  His audience then listened to the transmissions together.  This shared experience of listening to illegal radio then is another muse on his themes of shared experience this time with a political message.

bib

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rirkrit_Tiravanija

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=7479