Review to “From participation to interaction

Review to “From participation to interaction” by Söke Dinkla
Yau Chi On
13/02/2010


The essay simply told us the history of interactive art-work. From the beginning, which audiences participate in performance art, to a very basic interactive art-work, asking visitors using light to illuminate the art-work on their own, and then to apply electronic sensor, cameras to build up an interactive visual effect. Artists keep looking for new ways to narrow the distance between art-work and the visitors.

The essay has nothing attracted or interested me to penetrate with. Maybe we modern people have seen too many stunning interactive things, so those art-works like “Participation TV I” looks a little bit boring and stupid to us. Yeah, of course this is an idea of breakthrough at that moment, so the purpose of illumination and innovation is undeniable.

Nowadays, “Interactive” is anyhow conversant. We deal with lots of electronic devices every day, from cell-phone to soda machine, from computer to TV remote. On the other hand, computer makes it incredibly easy to create an interactive art. Any art student can use software like Flash, Arduino, and hardware like web-cam and microphone to develop his own interactive art-work in a few hours.

Advance of technology make interactive art-work too easy to achieve. But we should not forget how those predecessor artists use mechanical sensor and cathode television to show us the idea of interactivity between human and machine.