Interactive Art

The ARTworks seminar explores and examines the broad possibilities of engaging the end user with art and architecture - what is the dialogue created between the two, how do they affect each other, and when do the spaces and behaviors around them change.  Divided between public and private work, the seminar finds art that engages people and the places in which they find themselves.

I recently attended a talk given by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC.  Known for his large-scale interactive public art, Lozano-Hemmer uses new technologies including light, sound, video, robotics, internet and cell phones.  The pieces are random; his responsive environments rely on input and feedback from participants.  One cannot be a neutral observer; one's actions become part of the piece.

Please check out some of the videos on his site, Lozano-Hemmer.com.  You will find projects that create intimacy in large public places, that ask the viewer to present and represent themselves onto public sites.  Lozano-Hemmer directs a team of architects, artists, engineers and accountants to recreate communal spaces with movement, imagination and scale. 

Given the prevalence of surveillance in today's cities, Lozano-Hemmer had an idea of how people might react to his work.  In reality, people act differently than he thought; they are far more playful, acting in a theater of their own making.  He'll have a project at the Vancouver Olympics using high powered search lights that we can all collaborate on; using the internet, each of us can design a lighting tableau, bringing the virtual world into the physical space. 

Please let me know your thoughts about his projects.  Feel free to comment on the success and failure of these projects as I introduce them.  We can begin to discuss the value of art, to the community, to the self and to the surroundings.