New Media Post- Week 2

Trouble at the Interface 2.0 by Erkki Huhtamo

This was an interesting reading because it discusses the work that the author has seen at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. It was all described as instillation work that involved some sort of audience participation, which then brought up the question, what is considered interactive art? To me the answer seemed simple, interactive art involved the audience to make choices based on what was placed in front of them and therefore the piece evolves based off the decisions that were made. The author felt that in the most recent years of this competition there were instillations that won awards that were no where near being interactive. He blamed this reason on the fact that the panel of judges was changed every year. I felt that this was something that the author should have anticipated because everyones perception of what art is or the category that a certain piece should fall into is different. So how do you determine who’s opinion about interactive art is correct? Well the judges make their decisions based off the latest trends that they see in interactive art, so i guess you can say that their decisions of who should be the winner is not even based off their own perception of art, but societies current idea of what falls into the category of interactive art. This article also helped me realize that that interactive art doesn’t have to be active but it can be passive as well. What makes it interactive can also be the audiences willingness to not participate with the instillatoin, which I thought was interesting because when you think of the word “interactive” you associate active participation in order for the piece to evolve, but being passive towards it can also allow it to evolve into an instillation that will capture the viewers attention. This was an interesting reading because you think that interactive art or just art in general can be defined in a sentence or a paragraph, but the author was able to go into farther detail by using examples of other artists and ideas.