Viewer as Performer or Rhizomatic Archipelago of Interactive Art (original) (raw)

2013, RE-live. Media Art Histories

Interactive art does not have just one clearly specifi ed beginning. Problems encountered by researchers who attempt to collect its basic features and define the concept are caused by the number and variety of events and tendencies that underlie interactive art. These phenomena affected the conditions of its birth, they influenced the selection of basic attributes, and they determined the dynamics and directions of its development. It could be assumed that as a result of this complex genesis, the history of interactive art does not lie in linear order but follows several individual paths, usually parallel and entangled in some areas. As a result, it takes on the form of a complex, multidimensional system. The multitude of beginnings implies a multiplicity of histories. Consequently, we have a number of histories of interactive art, complementary and sometimes conflicting. Their shared map takes on the form of a continent with ragged contours, blurred borders, perhaps even with the shape of an archipelago or a form of a rhizome — because of its mobility, changeability, and vagueness of contours — which may only be described temporarily and in movement, never definitely. I would like to call it a rhizomatic archipelago. The history of interactive art mirrors its characteristic features in a very intriguing way: nonlinear construction, fluidity, transformation in many planes and directions, open architecture, and the multitude of perspectives, occurring in configurations that are always individualized. I shall take on the job of archeologist and cartographer to describe this complex phenomenon in order to distinguish several areas: the most important sources of interactive art in my opinion and the outline of their mutual map. Then I will identify and describe the most significant artistic achievements that began shaping the different tendencies in interactive art and the various sources they developed from, describe the factors and properties of each of these courses, provide the key to the matrices for artworks that were created in their influence, and bring together the interactive situations characteristic of all of them, thus determining the areas of interactive artistic activities.