Act/React

The two interactive art instillations that I chose to talk about on my blog are: Brian Knep's "Healing Pool," and Camille Utterback's "Moving Painting."  In Knep's piece the spectator walks over it separating the pool, which grows back together in a matter of moments.  If the spectators work together and walk or roll over a larger area of the piece, the same area disappears.  In Utterback's piece the spectator stands in front of the painting and moves and manipulates their body changing the art on the wall.  They can get closer, further away, swing their arms around, contort their bodies, etc., and the painting changes accordingly.  The reason I chose the two of these is because I think that they best describe interactive art.  

I think that both of them work with a persons entire body with interactivity.  In both works the spectator chooses their own movement to manipulate the art whatever way they want.  I think that in both works the spectator becomes the artist by becoming art itself.  Instead of art changing us, in this entire exhibit, we change art.  A good quote that I got out of the George Fifield essay is: "Visitors to a work of interactive art choose the path they take through it, the artist having given them a hand in determining their own experience."  I think that the artist and the spectator work together to make works of art in both of these acts.

Utterback's painting makes the spectator create, almost as if they were painting their own picture.  I think she wants to help the spectator become an artist themselves, by creating something beautiful on their own by moving their bodies to manipulate the painting.  I think that in Knep's piece the interaction can be with one or more person.  I think that he likes the idea that people try to make the entire lake disappear only for it to grow back in a matter of minutes.  I think that he uses the idea of group interactivity on this piece because if one person tries something to get the lake to disappear, other people with copy it and people work together to interact with it.

So all together, in works of art like this, the interactive artist and the spectator work together to create an all new experience.  A good example of an experience of mine with art in another medium compared to act/react art is a movie dvd that has the infinifilm feature on it.  You can watch the film itself, or you can choose the infinifilm option, which basically gives you an all access pass to the movie.  It lets you pick your favorite scenes, and gives you beyond the movie features.  It lets you manipulate the movie whatever way you want to.  If you're watching a musical and only want to watch specific songs, it lets you do that.  If you want to watch deleted scenes, you can do that.  It's a good way to interact with the film whichever way you want to, similar to the way that the spectator can interact with a piece of art whichever way they want to in act/react.