“It is Interactive—but is it Art?” by Huhtamo
Conference:
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Title:
- It is Interactive—but is it Art?
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Abstract:
“The possibilities of egalitarian, more democratic, constructive forms offering new kinds of interaction, knowledge, and understanding may well be enhanced by the novel capabilities of the new technologies. They will, more than ever before, have to be struggled for.” – Andy Darley
The Myth of Interactivity
“Well, my next thing is going to be something interactive … ” For some years now, this has been a stock answer in interviews with artists, and not only those who already work with electronic and digital technologies. Indeed, “interactive art” seems well on its way to becoming the art form of the 1990s. Yet one shouldn’t let its present visibility delude oneself. Although contemporary interactive art may seem “groundbreaking,” the ground had already been grubbed by such movements as Fluxus and E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) in the 1960s, as well as by a great variety of “postmodern” strategies, emphasizing recycling, deliberate confusion between “the original” and “the copy,” and aiming at repositioning, sometimes to the point of reconstituting, the traditional art audience.
