Outre-Ronde: research on a contra-intuitive interaction

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Outre-Ronde: research on a contra-intuitive interaction

• Anne-Sarah Le Meur

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Artist Statement

  Keywords: perception, emotion, relationship, psychology, counter-intuitive, power, interaction, art, imperfection, experience, system.

  After a short description of Outre-Ronde and an introduction to it’s concepts (limitation in the power of seeing, circular ego-centred, fluid and counterintuitive interaction), I will analyse how interaction rules the associated image and the chosen screen can question and widen our perceptions and our relationship to the world.
  In Outre-Ronde, who acts on who? Who makes who move? Can interaction be reciprocated? (The viewer and the image, each in turn, attract and lose one another). What are the consequences of this? Can interaction make viewers question the power images have over them? Can it also make them question their desire to watch, modify, manipulate, to reify these images? The aim of the experimental interaction in Outre-Ronde is to lead the viewer to feel, to see, to move, to act, to relate and to think differently.

  This talk will consider the conception and aims of interaction rules, in order to understand what new means interaction gives us to communicate with an audience. How can one make best use of programming language procedures and construct an artistic interaction? Is it possible to avoid the superficial – and unequivocal – playfulness of interactive artworks? Should interaction always seek to please the viewer? Or rather should it destabilise and disturb him/her, and lead to unusual behaviour which is transforming? What kind of interaction touches the viewer most
  intensely? Can the programming artist enable the viewer to feel the ambivalence of the animated image, half artefact/half animal, half seductive/half wild? Can the artist make the viewer feel his/her presence behind the interaction rules? Can he/she also make the viewer feel the fragility of the interaction rules and their possible reversal, their possible reciprocity, their symbolic potential? Is there an unfinished, imperfect element in interaction, equivalent to that found in painting? Can an interactive system go beyond rigid formal logic, and reach its artistic goal without the viewer trying to understand, to elucidate the system (the famous ‘but how does it work?’) – this attempt at understanding making the viewer miss a more sensitive experience? The aim of Outre-ronde is to thwart direct and immediate power by valuing – and
  finding pleasure in – slowness, stillness, open contemplation and empathy. The talk will consider whether an artistic interaction has the potential to be sensitive, bilateral and fluid; reifying neither the image nor the viewer but rather being a surprising, transforming experience which impacts on the body.

Category:

• Artist Talk