Interactive art engages the viewer in the creative process, challenging the traditional boundary between artist and audience. It can be physical or digital, often using computing power to respond to viewer actions. Marcel Duchamp’s Rotary Glass Plates device may have been one of the first examples. Interactive architecture uses computation to handle physical responses with users. Video games are interactive applications, but some dispute whether they constitute interactive art due to limited user influence.
Interactive art is any type of art that engages the viewer in the creative process. Interactive art attempts to challenge the traditional boundary between artist and ‘audience’. It can use a physical medium, as is the case with installation art, or it can be purely digital and internet-based. Interactive art often uses computing power to govern responses to viewer actions.
The art movement of the early 1900s in Europe and North America set the stage for the emergence of interactive art. People have started questioning the role of the artist, the work and the viewer in art. French-American artist Marcel Duchamp may have created one of the first examples of interactive art with his Rotary Glass Plates device of the 1920s. His machine used a motor to spin rectangular pieces of glass on which segments of circles were painted. When viewed from a distance of 3.28 feet (1 meter), an optical illusion of full circles was formed.
Technology usually features prominently in interactive art. For an artwork to be interactive, it must have a way to perceive a viewer’s actions. This can be in the form of physical sensors or, in the case of internet-based art, computer input devices such as the mouse. The job typically also needs to have a specific way of responding to inputs. Often a large number of results can be achieved with plenty of room for viewer interpretation.
Some installation artworks are interactive. Interest in creating interactive installations grew in the 1990s when digital technology became sufficiently advanced. Sensors embedded in the interactive installation art can respond to the viewer’s temperature, motion, or proximity to deliver a unique experience. Physical works of interactive art installation are increasingly exhibited in the museum environment.
Interactive architecture is the idea of a designed environment that uses some type of computation to handle physical responses with users. Some of the foundation for interactive architecture came from work on cybernetics, the study of regulatory systems, in the early 1960s. The digital advances of the following decades made interactive architecture both technologically and economically feasible. Interactive architecture is a new and evolving concept, but it shares a lot in common with interactive art.
Video games are interactive applications, but some critics dispute the idea that they constitute interactive art. Video games often have very little room for the user to influence creative dimensions of the game, such as the story. For example, there can only be two possible endings to a game: win or lose. In this case, many critics charge that the game is not art because it is not open-ended.
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