"When you say something is interactive, it sounds like you should be able to
change it somehow. But generally the choices are very restricted, and
leaving is like checking out of a hotel room: the work returns to its
pristine condition, and there is not evidence you were ever there."
   Perry Hobermann in 'The Web As Art

I think that it would be wise to come up with some scale or levels of
interactivity
not everything netart piece is as interactive as it would like to be
usually the user still follows the patterns that the artist has build in and
that's that

also i think that we shouldn.t look too much at the result but the quality
of the experience
the experience is the artistic material in my opinion.

interactive pieces involve very active audiences
i don't see why a museum with all it's unwritten rules (don't speak don't
laugh don't touch.. ofcourse they are afraid of user input) would be the
place for interactive pieces
also interactive pieces involve intimacy
usually only viewed on a computer screen at home why rip it out of it's
context and place it in a museum or project it on a wall???

why place a large scale interactive piece in a museum
somehow it seems odd to me like two worlds that do not fit......
they weren't developed to be shown in a museum they are not objects

according to me netart and interactive art have always found alternative
channels in the artworld to promote themselves
if placing net or interactive art in musea is a way of attracting new and/or
young audiences do not even try it won't work

maybe someone can convince me why they (interactive works) should be placed
in musea, what's the added value?
if it involves large scale audience input, let the piece come to the people
place it on the streets, in metro's (if mozes won't dome to the
mountain.....)

cyper


----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Henry" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: Too Interactive: Nov theme of the month


> >Too Interactive: Physical installations for groups.
> >Due to the non-arrival of artificial intelligence, these artworks can
> >offer the richest forms of interaction between audiences and
> >programmed artwork possible with current technology. Why then, do
> >they appear in mainstream art museums and galleries so infrequently
> >(net.art being currently much more common)?
> >Are they just  too difficult to install? Have they gone out of
> >fashion? Are museums frightened of audience input? Are artists
> >frightened to relinquish 'control'? Are these artworks doomed to
> >remain in  the "Turing Land" of 'electronic art' rather than the
> >"Duchamp Land" of art museums?
>
> Large-scale interactive works of the kind discussed at the symposium
> can, of course, be extremely difficult to install and maintain. But if
> art museums and galleries can manage the logistics of, say, a flying
> steamroller or a Mike Nelson installation, this kind of thing shouldn't
> be entirely beyond their wit.
>
> Beryl asks: "Are museums frightened of audience input? Are artists
> frightened to relinquish 'control'?" Quite possibly, on both counts. But
> the questions presuppose - I think - that to do so is necessarily a
> desirable and artistically (and socially/politically?) progressive move.
> I'd like to question this implicit hierarchy, which places the radically
> democratic interactive artwork (with AI as paradigm) at the top, and the
> stable, 'traditional' art object - a painting or photograph hung on a
wall,
> for example - at the bottom. This hierarchy suggests a kind of
> technological determinism to me, reminiscent of Benjamin's belief that
> mechanical reproduction would strip the art object of its aura. It also
> smacks of a modernist teleology - albeit somewhat displaced - in which
art,
> hand in hand with science, pushes humankind inexorably towards future
> emancipation.
>
> Do interactive artworks really offer richer forms of interaction between
> audiences and artworks, or just different ones?
>
> I'm not trying to diminish 'interactive' art, just to question some of the
> rhetoric that so often accompanies it. Maybe we should be more interested
> in how good it is than how interactive it is, and make our arguments about
> inclusion/exclusion accordingly.
>
>
> Patrick Henry
> Curator of Exhibitions
> National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, UK.
>
>
>
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