Advanced Sculpture, 2014

Project 3: Interactivity
ANALYSIS

Paige Burger
Analysis Interactivity

Interactive art requires the viewer to have an experience or directly engage with a piece in order for the art to come into fruition. There are many ways in which artists have investigated the roles in which viewers can play in activating or experiencing the work.

Community art and collectives are interactive by nature. Mel Chin usually engages a wide range of people in his work in order to promote social awareness and civic responsibility. In response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina he initiated the Fundred Dollar Bill Project, which first educated the community about the needs facing the New Orleans people. Then his project gave the students a chance to create their own artwork, decorating a blank bill, which could theoretically be traded out for real dollars by congress.  He then took the Fundreds to congress. The project would not have been as possible, or nearly as powerful, without community involvement.

Interactive art often requests vulnerability, physical or psychological.  Rebecca Horn’s work deals with both. She is most notable for creating body suits.  The suits, in a variety of ways, extend the body outward into its environment. In Finger Gloves, Horn explores the distance between the body and objects.  The gloves create finger extensions enabling her to reach objects that are too far to touch with her own hands.  She is a mechanical expert and has made the gloves out of light-weight materials with levered fingers so that the experience of touching and moving the objects is palpable. Finger Gloves defines how touching makes possible a particular type of intimacy.

Interactive art can occur even without the awareness of the participant. Vito Acconci has a way of creating interactive art that doesn’t invite the viewer to become a participant but imposes the experience upon them. Acconci subliminally engaged people in Following Piece.  This piece is particularly interesting because it also deals with how private and public space affect the aspect of interactivity.  During the performance Acconci would follow around a stranger, some random passerby, until the person would go into a private space at which time the performance would end. However, he added another layer of process in the project by typing up the account and sending it to a fellow artist. In doing this, he is placing a physical object inside of a private space warranted or not. His accounts of the public space where then read inside of the private and another person became influenced by his silent performance.  Neither person that was involved asked to be involved.