Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7.1
A gallery viewer
interacts with
From Closed
Rooms, Soft Whispers
,
wherein printed collages are
made interactive through
digital projection and AR,
providing an experience
mediated through several
screens simultaneously
with installed gallery displays, or in the case of locationally diffuse works, the more
and more ubiquitous smart phone (Fig.
7.1
).
The most passive level of interaction takes place purely on the level of the
machine, which provides a virtual frame for the interaction, with the viewer then
moving or changing the view/focus of the machine, but not interacting with the
primary components. The viewing device for the user becomes a digital prosthesis
which allows them to “sense” artwork in a variety of ways unapparent to the
unaided senses. The work required just to experience the artwork entails a kind of
performance, albeit one which is passive in the sense of changing the piece's state.
Viewers are “performative observers” (Morrison
2010
) who can be affected by the
piece, and even be receptive to it in a perlocutionary way, but they do not affect
significant change on the piece.
A good example is Camille Scherrer's
The Haunted Book
(Scherrer et al.
2008
).
Exhibition of this piece entails a topic, a lamp modified to contain a video camera,
and a computer screen. Through the experience of this piece viewers see short
movies overlaid on different pages of a physical topic. It is a beguiling artwork
that provokes a whimsical state of interaction with the viewer - one that is focused
on the aspect of hidden content revealed through the appropriate digital prosthesis.
