The Mixed, the Virtual, and the Interactive in Art
Ulm
Professor Lucy Kim
Critical Theory II
1 April 2017
The Mixed, the Virtual, and the Interactive in Art
With the latest developments in virtual/mixed reality technology being the current focus of much mass media, it seems worth noting historic, as brief as that may be, analysis of its role in art. In particular, considerations of virtual/mixed reality’s space in art has been and remains closely tied to interactive art, as noted in Soke Dinkla’s investigations of interactive art in “From Participation to Interaction.” Interestingly, analysis of two common views regarding the phenomenological aspects of interactive art, reveal alliances related to the choices of technics and methods of interface unique to distinct forms of mixed reality. On one side of the subtle divide is a view expounded by Myron Krueger, and Mark Hansen which focuses on the art of the interaction and the value of mixed reality to expand the body schema. Indeed, Krueger asserts, “the beauty of the visual and aural response is secondary. Response is the medium (“Responsive Environments” 430)!” On the other side, one may look to reflections by Oliver Grau and Brenda Laurel who discuss interaction as a way to allow the audience to complete artistic meaning with virtual reality facilitating uniquely powerful immersion.
Formal discussions of interaction as elements of high art begin with early and mid twentieth century avant-garde movements proclaiming a focus on closing the gap between the elite and the populace. Here, participation served as an effective form of production and reception to realize this goal. Artists would release the power structure surrounding their works such that audiences were permitted and encouraged to do more than simply view (Dinkla, “From Participation” 279).
Remaining restrictions on participation and interaction began to be explored and reduced during the movements of the 1950s and 60s. The Happenings are an obvious contributor to the lineage of modern interactive art, particularly as it heavily explored the blurring of the line between completed work and audience experience, focusing on including visitor participation in the creation of the piece. Even so, Dinkla notes, “Kaprow’s Happenings make abundantly clear that not every form of participation per se implies a higher responsibility for the visitor and thus a less authoritarian role of the artist (“From Participation” 283). Happenings often relied on the artist’s presence to direct the creation process, though a more automated form was developed in which Kaprow would write a series of instructions to be followed for the event, in this way providing the artist’s intentions through a mediated form — similar to the Fluxus games.
The role of a mediator between artist and audience is the main development leading from participation to the user-technology relationship of modern interactive art. That mediator has evolved from paper, to the analogue mechanisms of interactive kinetic sculptures, to a technics format — utilizing electronic devices and technology to manifest the artwork. Some of the earliest forays into interactive art took place in the 1970s centered around responsive environments (Dinkla, “History of the Interface”). These experiences leveraged technological systems to facilitate unique and before unattainable examples of human interaction within an art piece. Here Krueger describes his pioneering mixed reality piece developed in the mid 1970s emphasizing the importance he places on the ‘art of interaction’: “The VIDEOPLACE interactions redefine the human body’s relationship to reality . . . By defining unusual relationships between cause and effect, this medium comments on our sense of reality (Krueger, “Videoplace” 153).”
This emphasis on the role of interaction as the source of the meaning in art, as the signifier itself, is explained by Mark Hansen through its relationships to body schema. A strong defender of Krueger’s values of interaction as art and particularly his views regarding a preference for more open interactive environments over head mounted displays, Hansen focuses on the ability of Krueger’s work to extend the body into reality, virtual or otherwise (29). For Hansen, humans’ ability to psychologically and unconsciously adjust and adapt their body schema is uniquely fostered and leveraged by mixed reality. He relates a discussion by Maurice Merleau-Ponty describing how a blind person’s cane is entirely integrated into the body schema, not seen as a tool or a device (Hansen 21). He argues that responsive environments and technics for mixed reality are incorporated into the body schema as well, and thus the “new mixed reality paradigm foregrounds the constitutive or ontological role of the body in giving birth to the world (Hansen 5).
Around the same time that interactive art began to incorporate technology such as kinetic input and responsive environments, the ocularcentric research into stereoscopic display began, with computer scientist, Ivan Sutherland. In 1968 he created the first head-tracking, head-mounted display for virtual reality, known as the Sword of Damocles due to its massive system of computers, cables, and suspension mechanisms. However, by the early 1990’s artists found ways to incorporate this new technology in a practical manner for the audience. Krueger was not impressed, declaring, “Whereas the HMD folks thought that 3D scenery was the essence of reality, I felt that the degree of physical involvement was the measure of immersion (Hansen 4).” The use of HMDs as an interface for interaction is seen by Krueger as a limiting experience which focuses on the visual illusion and the content of the mediated image provided by the artist (Dinkla, “History of the Interface”). However, Grau disagrees, noting that even during this early period of hardware development, this approach proves influential, “although the heavy HMD actually only supplies the visual field with images, it creates the suggestive impression of full- body immersion in the virtual environment. The feeling of being in the images, produced by the spatially enveloping visual impression, is thus amplified (193).”
Artists and theorists alike recognized the potential for even greater immersion within a artwork via the visual sensory control produced by HMDs. Grau wrote a piece on artist Char Davies’ 1995 work, Osmose, in which he describes the complete immersion into her nature inspired universe experienced through an HMD and interactive interfaces suggestive of diving apparati. Part of the success of the experience is due to the interactive response and control produced through a strikingly unique interface by which the immersant controls movement through his/her breathing — normal breathing to produce a fixed location within the virtual space and the holding of a full breath to produce the intuitive upward floating reaction (Grau 197). While this interactive element provides a natural interface for exploring the artist’s biome, it does not reduce the importance of the perceptual experience unique to virtual reality art to fully immerse the user. In fact, Grau notes the “cardinal effect of virtual reality: The suggestive presence in a totality of images gives rise to a mental—in Osmose, meditative—absorption. The psychological power of this new art of illusion becomes apparent in this work as in no other (198).”
Brenda Laurel and Rachel Strickland’s 1993 piece, Placeholder, also harnessed the immersive qualities of virtual reality, with a focus on presence, or “the psychological state in which the virtuality of experiences is unnoticed (Lee 32).” The piece allowed for interactions between not only human and technic, but also human to human, providing the artists’ visual elements in the virtual world as the foci. Laurel who has remained at the forefront of virtual reality development in the spanning years, described the artists’ intentions with this pioneering piece: “We wanted to make a design statement that VR had uses beyond training, that it could be wild, wonderful, playful. We wanted to work on the question of embodiment (Crecente).” For some artists the value of the HMD, even in its physically primitive infancy, was apparent in its ability to engage the immersant in a more pervasive manner. Its attraction stemmed not only from its interactive potential but from its place in the history of art’s obsession with producing mesmeric illusion that can be traced from cave drawings to the popularity of the cyclorama. For these artists, interactivity and visual omnipresence provide unique means of access to the immersant as well as inform the experience with a powerful psychological presence.
While the power of interactive technics to extend the body schema are embraced for tactile senses, the disapproval of visual augmentation remains even with current improvements to form factor, price, and implementation; “What is truly novel and promising about consumer electronics is not the possibility they open for creating ever more immersive illusory spaces, but rather the expanded scope they accord embodied human agency (Hansen 3).” Yet, in 2016, Laurel still sees the powerful possibilities of virtual reality for the artist to explore: “By engaging in an immersive virtual world with various affordances and themes, a participant creates a story, or many stories, by traversals of the world (“What is Virtual Reality”).” Perhaps the eventual untethering of the stereoscopic view will at last remove the shadow of doubt regarding the role of perceptual technics in art as a means of enhancing the body schema — after all, the blind person’s cane does not extend the arm, but rather the eyes. Then at last, these views regarding mixed reality and virtual reality may be stitched together, reflecting the pervasive power of intuitive, physio-centric interactivity as a conduit for immersion in art.
Works Cited
Crecente, Brian. “VR’s Quintessential Innovators.” Polygon. Polygon, 26 Oct. 2016. Web. 24 Mar. 2017.
Dinkla, Soke, and Lynn Hershman Leeson. “From Participation to Interaction.” Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture, Bay Press, Seattle, WA, 1996, pp. 279–290.
Dinkla, Soke. “The History of the Interface in Interactive Art.” 1994.
Grau, Oliver. Virtual art: from illusion to immersion. Cambridge, MA, MIT, 2003, pp. 193-2004.
Hansen, Mark B. N. Bodies in code: interfaces with digital media. New York, Routledge, 2008.
Krueger, Myron W. “Responsive Environments.” Proceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference AFIPS ’77 (1977): 423-33. Web.
Krueger, Myron W. “VIDEOPLACE: A Report from the Artificial Reality Laboratory.” Leonardo 18.3 (1985): 145-51. Web.
Laurel, Brenda. “What Is Virtual Reality?” Medium. N.p., 15 June 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.
Lee, K. M. (2004). Presence, Explicated. Communication Theory, 14, 27-50.