Anne-Marie Duguet *

Does Interactivity Lead to New Definitions in Art

Art's confrontation with new technology has led to calls for a redefinition of art, and to
demands for a revision of aesthetic criteria. Criticism finds itself at a loss, for it lacks
concepts and guidelines enabling it to grasp and convey the singularity of new artistic
developments. Critics therefore react in various, often extreme, ways, vacillating between
an obsessive fear of gadget-based charlatanism and an unconditional commitment to
technology as the key to renewal. On the one hand, a conservative discourse calls eagerly
for a return to traditional concepts of the artwork, of sacredness, and of beauty, while on
the other, an often demagogic and opportunistic stance dismisses all criteria as dogma to
be rejected in favor of individual judgment and an impressionistic approach. Most critics,
however, simply adopt a wait and see attitude.
When, in the recent past, technological possibilities matched bold artistic ambitions, they
hastened the demise - already triggered by various avant-garde movements - of notions
such as: the unity of an artwork, intentionality as the ultimate validation of that work, the
artist's skills, the value of originality, and the spectator's status as an observer from a
fixed point of view.
Video installations and interactive works now provide a privileged terrain for exploring
these artistic shifts and upheavals. In many ways, they press for a reconsideration of the
entire sphere of art, not least of all its claim to autonomy. Interactive installations are
borderline works, extending across diverse realms - communications, science,
entertainment, education. And they are perfectly impure, mixing as they do media,
techniques, and a whole range of elements (including the human body), thereby
incorporating heterogeneous codes, attitudes, and skills into art.
The problem of legitimizing these practices is similar to the problems encountered
during the development of photography, cinema and video. Art defines itself by what it
excludes as well as by what it admits. The art scene exercises control over its domain by
systematically rejecting the teeming world of video games, demo tapes, scientific and
technical productions, applied arts, and so on. It is striking to note the haste - not to say
the fury - with which a work is deemed acceptable or unacceptable as art.
The current fluctuation and precariousness of critical criteria are obviously linked to the
very evolution of such works and the context in which they are presented. It is only by
recognizing recent transformations and seeking new definitions that the issue of
evaluating these works can be rethought. This task can be accomplished by first
determining what constitutes an artifact that is "primarily intended for aesthetic
consideration," which is precisely what Gerard Genette does in his recent book, L'ceuvre
de l'art. Rather than asking Nelson Goodman's question, "When is art?", Genette prefers
to interrogate the very mode of existence of such works. Both formulations circumvent
what Goodman calls a "false question", namely "What is art?". Pursuing for a moment
the distinction made by Genette following Goodman - installations could be described not
as autographic works, but as allographic works. They are not physical objects in the sense
that painting and sculpture are, always offering themselves in identical fashion to
contemplation and imitation. Installations do not have a single mode of existence, but at
least two. What a collector acquires is an argument, a technical description - sometimes
with images, elements or equipment - that basically comprises a set of instructions and a
right to exhibit the work. At this stage it might be said the work is comparable to a
musical score or an architectural drawing. According to Genette, such works have "a
plural immanence", which means that they can take multiple forms, that there is an
indefinite number of correct executions. "Correct" here means complying with the
instructions set out in the proposition. Whereas immanent properties do not change,
actualization properties vary considerably depending on the architectural or symbolic
siting of the exhibition, or depending on decisions taken by the artist. Each occurrence,
each actualization of the work is unique, not reproducible.
But here one could evoke a third mode of existence for these works - after the
conceptual mode and the installation mode namely that of performance, of experience.
The installation is designed to be explored by visitors who, in so doing, not only
progressively build their own perception and awareness of it, but also that of other
visitors. The very existence of certain works, in particular interactive installations,
requires visitors to play a specific role - one visitor effectively executes a performance for
the others. The specific temporality of these works is worth stressing, for they are above
all processes that exist only for the duration of the experience, for the here-and-now of
their realization. They belong to an art of presentation and not representation (even if
they incorporate representation).
A provisional definition of installation might entail the idea of a performance-inducing
"apparatus" (dispositif), which should often be the first thing described when discussing
such works: an arrangement of devices and elements as well as modes of enunciation
likely to produce specific effects of perception, awareness, pleasure, representation. The
apparatus may itself become the issue explored by several installations. For by creating a
site of exchange and transformation between a mental space and a material reality, an
apparatus defines the conditions of a given experience, that is to say the range of
possibilities and constraints governing relations between subject, technology, image,
environment and participants. It establishes the specific operations that constitute the
uniqueness of each works its very logic.
Video ihstallations have already spurred reflection on the status and role of the spectator,
on the activity of perception and the issue of representation. Interactive installations are
now intensifying this radical displacement of attention onto the actual experience of the
work, and artists are becoming less interested in producing startling images than in
inventing new ways to access them and to explore virtual worlds. For certain works,
then, interactivity is not a genre but a mode of existence, a fundamental parameten
Whether it entails a simple triggering device or the infinite exploration of a complex data
base, interactive art transforms the spectator into operator, altering traditional
assumptions concerning the conception and j production of a work. Artists are led to
invent specific experiential conditions. But the type of experience at stake here is j more
than just the sensory and cognitive experience typical of j the aesthetic contemplation of
an artwork, for it now includes the competing, interactive experience of an operational
approach that the spectator only partially masters.
Given this new situation, the interface cannot be a mere afterthought - it now becomes
the very heart of the work, the key to the entire apparatus that it drives. And the
potential range of interfaces is unlimited insofar as systems now on the market can serve
as the point of departure for the invention of original objects and unexpected
combinations. Although artists may become tinkerers and engineers, it is no longer the
virtuosity of the hand that counts but the ability of the eventual operator to explore the
system devised by artists, who must therefore reflect on new, pragmatic parameters
concerning ease of use, physical adaptability to the pace of machine computation, and
behavioral and perceptual effects triggered by the interface.
Like video installations, interactive installations introduce multisensory experience into
the field of art, potentially mobilizing all the senses. Yet interactive operating procedures
and interface experimentation also provide the possibility of rethinking the very
relationships between sense organs, redistributing their roles. The supremacy of the eye
in organizing the visible world is thus challenged in radical fashion. The gaze delegates
part of its power to the good will and virtuosity of fingers, to the appropriateness and
precision of gestures, speed of movement, control of breath, intonation of voice. The eye
often retains only a monitoring function, and must dialogue with the hand that seeks and
activates the virtual world.
But as ingenious as an interface may be, it cannot be reduced to its instrumental or
ergonomic features, for it is also the site of metaphorical and conceptual issues. Above
all, it is part of a vaster apparatus that mobilizes various contradictions and tensions
between virtuality and reality, between different models and techniques of representation,
between individual experience and collective activity.
The transformation of the nature of the work and the accompanying shift in the role of
spectators also implies a change in the role of artists. However, a misreading of this
development (or a refusal even to consider it) is the basis of the common believe that
artist and spectator have now become co-creators. But creators of what? The artist is
creator of the proposition, the concept behind the piece, the apparatus, the
overallcontext. An arist is thus responsible br the coherence and logic of the work. The
visitor meanwhile, takes up the proposkion, plays on it, performs it. Any analysis of an
interactive installation that seeks to reveal its internal imperatives and specific ru]es will
have to take into account these major shifts in the 'production history' of a work in order
to elaborate relevant criteria. A formalist approach, at any rate, can only be superseded by
confronting a work's internal logic with the nature of its content, with its relationship to
various contexts, and with its degree of relevance - that is to say the perspectives it opens
and the issues it raises.


* Anne-Marie Duguet is one of the leading theorists in the field of interactive digital art. She is professor at
the department of fine arts at Universit Paris I and head of Centre de Recherches d'Esthetique du Cinma
et des Arts Audiovisuels. She has published extensively on image and interactive digital art.: Vido, la
mmoire au poing, 1981; Vido. Communications (dir. with Raymond Bellour), N 48, Paris, Seuil, 1988; Jeffrey
Shaw - a Users Manual. From Expanded Cinema to Virtual Reality; ZKM, Cantz Verlag Ostfildern, 1996.