Duality of Participation and Interaction

In the text “From Participation to Interaction”, Söke Dinkla discusses the evolution of the participation of the viewer in different art forms and the essence of interactive art from a historical perspective. She describes the user - program dialogue as the artistic material in interactive artworks. She states: “The mimetic strategies of interactive art do not aim primarily at visual qualities; rather, the dialogue between program and user constitutes the artistic material.”

It can be said that the foundations of viewer - artwork / performance dialogue was built with the avant-garde art pioneers. Through time, it has developed into different forms such as Dada, Happening and Fluxus as Dinkla mentions. But she sees the artist as an authorial leader in these forms and states the differentiation between interactive art with these words: “The interactive system takes the place of the authorial leader.”

In some artworks, the spatial position of the viewer plays a crucial role on the experience one gets from the artwork. It can be said that the position of the viewer becomes a part of the artwork. In this situation, the viewer’s positioning themselves in the space can be seen both as a participation and an interaction.

This kind of interaction may occur more often in sound art work. Christina Kubisch’s work Cloud can be given as a great example of this. Cloud is a sound installation which works with electromagnetic induction. The cloud is a hanging structure made of ca. 1500 metres of electrical cable which is not only a visual object but also a sound sculpture. The participants explore the sound sculpture by wearing headphones that convert electromagnetic induction into sound. Since the electromagnetic field around the sculpture varies differently depending on the shape, length and density of the cables, the sound it produces changes depending on the position of the viewer.

Without the auditory feedback, the artwork can be experienced as a sculpture; cables hanging from the ceiling in the middle of an empty room. By wearing the headphones, the viewer participates in the experience by walking around it, trying to find specific spots and exploring the sonic field. In this situation the viewer’s participation can also be perceived from the outside as “people, blending in with the sculpture”. And finally as personal experience, changing the listening position and moving around the sonic field becomes the interaction itself.

This way of seeing spatial positioning of the viewer as a method of interaction can be criticised in many ways. Viewer is being “there” while experiencing almost any artwork (Maybe ones that use not being there [tele - presence] can be excluded). But it must be emphasised that this situation is valid only if the spatial positioning changes and / or becomes the main part of the artistic experience. Considering the usage of systems like tele / virtual presence and spatial audio technologies in art, the role of spatiality as an interaction method may develop further in future.