“The device in interactive art: Interactivity, Gesture and Sense” presented by Sosa
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Performance (Papers)
Presentation Title:
- The device in interactive art: Interactivity, Gesture and Sense
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Abstract:
THE DEVICE IN INTERACTIVE ART: Interactivity, Gesture and Sense.Given contemporary works of art that make use of technology (be it digital, electronic or even analog), the emergence of an artistic practice distinguished by the construction of an unfinished, potential configuration has become evident; its evolution is determined by contact with the public, who is invited to an interaction that is not just interpretative anymore (the secret dialogue in which every work engages its audience) but deliberately material. The audience participates in the process of giving tangible existence to a work that bears in its genesis the expectation for this encounter and the manifestation of an ever latent and provisional form.
However, while these descriptions manage to identify inherent features of Interactive Art, they prove to be too general to spot the differences various works present in their evolution; furthermore, establishing the final result indetermination as a feature of this type of platforms per se, associated to an apparent unpredictability of the public’s actions, leaves wide areas of uncertainty, failing to interrogate the specific ways they manifest that indetermination in a particular work. The aim of this paper is to explore the specificity of Interactive Art focusing on the concept of device, present in Philosophy and other arts, from the perspective of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, and the notion of gesture from the author Vilém Flusser. Taking this theoretical approach, we examine the modes of articulation of an Interactive Art work and the different ways of creating sense that are expressed in the public’s behavior. Through the analysis of two interactive works of the artist Rafael Lozano Hemmer, we explore the nature of gestures in interaction and the factors that prompt them as part of the device created in the work of art.
