Interactive Art: A valid concept?

[Eiuol]

My question is essentially this: Can something interactive be art? Or does interaction imply a utilitarian purpose and therefore interaction and art are mutually exclusive?

I am primarily relating this to video games, but also to anything else that requires interaction. Most video games are 100% utilitarian and their designers were not striving for art. But others, like Bioshock, were intended to be considered art by its designers. For one, such a game obviously contains a selective re-creation of reality. There are the beginnings of a metaphysical value judgment. But this is where my issue comes in. The designer sets up a scenario, and provides the consequences, but is the designer expressing his metaphysical value judgments when it requires choice and action to be realized in some form? It seems to me that if an outside viewer is interacting with a piece of work, it is the viewer, not the artist, who is making metaphysical value judgments.

[L-C]

What if the game is completely linear, and what the player experiences (other than strict pacing, but in a way that is comparable to reading a book at one's own pace) is a story entirely created and controlled by the developer?

[spaceplayer]

My question is essentially this: Can something interactive be art? Or does interaction imply a utilitarian purpose and therefore interaction and art are mutually exclusive?

I am primarily relating this to video games, but also to anything else that requires interaction. Most video games are 100% utilitarian and their designers were not striving for art. But others, like Bioshock, were intended to be considered art by its designers. For one, such a game obviously contains a selective re-creation of reality. There are the beginnings of a metaphysical value judgment. But this is where my issue comes in. The designer sets up a scenario, and provides the consequences, but is the designer expressing his metaphysical value judgments when it requires choice and action to be realized in some form? It seems to me that if an outside viewer is interacting with a piece of work, it is the viewer, not the artist, who is making metaphysical value judgments.

Well, is there a distinction made between "interactive art" and "interactive entertainment?" (Allowing, of course, for the inevitable hybrids.) Entertainment can, by it's definition, be passive or active, but art always starts as an individual thought expressing one's personal values. I've been thinking about this for some time, as a musician myself. I hear about the new technology being a way to "socialize" music, where people are empowered to remix and create their own songs from other people's music. While I can see some pro's and con's to this, I first strip away the "technology" side of the issue; the fact that it's done with 1's and 0's doesn't erase the nature of art as being, primarily, a "selective recreation" according to value judgements, which, despite the protests of the socialists, means it's primarily an INDIVIDUAL creation. Yes, an artist can collaborate and employ division of labor where others can contribute THEIR value judgements...but the flip side makes me think of the "social art" of the FOUNTAINHEAD, or the architects who imposed themselves on Keating/Roark's housing project ("we want to express our creativity, too.) Of course, the issue comes back to intellectual property and consent. That was a non-electronic "interactive art" of the worst kind.

But on the positive side, if someone does a remix or mashup of my music, and I like the result, I'm not going to complain. And there's the give-and-take of performance, like "call-and-response" where the musician calls out a line and the audience/other performer calls it back. The interaction can alter the original artist's intent in a good way, and the energy exchange can be amazing. So, interactive art is nothing new, it's just taking an electronic form.

Just my spur of the moment thoughts, but yeah, valid concept if done by consenting adults.

[Andrew Grathwohl]

Video games are not good examples of interactive art - even ones like Bioshock. It's really just multimedia: it combines interactive, visual, audio, narrative, and emergent contexts into a single whole. Interactive art, as the term is known today, describes installation-based artworks that receive some form of user participation to create an organic performance/viewing experience. Video games are different because of how the user relates to the art; the user reacts to the actions of the game, whereas with interactive art, the art reacts to the user's input. No matter what you do, the video game has a predictable outcome as determined by if statements, whereas interactive art is more likely to incorporate algorithmic or generative processes to accomplish its processes. I think it is pretty legitimate to depict video games as a genre of art all its own, these days.

Now, to your question: yes, interactivity is a perfectly legitimate method of creating at. There is no reason why an interactively-controlled installation art work cannot portray a romantic-realist aesthetic, convey a heroic perception of mankind, and demonstrate how man is and should be like.

Video games are even more obvious - almost every video game I've ever played puts the player in the situation of being the hero. In the online world, everyone is the hero. Eve Online is a great example of a very Objectivist concept of art - it's a heroic depiction of human society (space voyaging is commonplace, and the player selects his heroic life through a series of quests, missions, trainings, and developments/customizations), you can become a master of many trades/industries, you glorify and respect the art of contracting, producing, creating, building, and earning, and you are discouraged from using aggressive force, while your right to retaliatory force is respected. Ayn Rand would have loved and approved of Eve Online, which is likely why there's a large number of Objectivists who play the game, and run a corporation called Taggart Transdimensional (http://eve-history.net/wiki/index.php/Taggart_Transdimensional).

I have a hard time seriously considering interactive art or video games purely utilitarian. Indeed, both are 'consumed' by the viewers to some extent (and often, to a great extent), but the fact that games these days require so much mental capacity to play, and not merely reflexes and repetition, informs me of the incredibly complex and difficult thought processes involved in their creation. Many video games these days are very passive in terms of interactivity, and others make great strides to be incredibly in-depth, detailed, and expressive in a number of fields, including but not limited to sound and visual art, storytelling, or emergence. Perhaps games like TRON, Asteroids, and Tetris don't accomplish these types of tasks, but games like Bioshock, Eve Online, and even Starcraft certainly do.

[Eiuol]

What brought me to ask my question is an e-mail correspondence I've been having with someone. This comment I made both clarifies what I mean by "interactive art" and why I was thinking it is not a valid concept (as in, art is the wrong word to use). It may be better to say that if you interact with something, does that disqualify it from being art? Doesn't interacting imply a change caused by the viewer, therefore altering an artist's metaphysical value judgments? This comment is in reference to a sculpture with parts that can be moved by a viewer.

"...In any piece of art, the viewer cannot alter what is in the art. No matter what the viewer thinks/feels/likes/enjoys will not have any affect on the art. In anything interactive, the user necessarily alters what is there. The designer probably begins with their own value judgments, but if you move an arm, it changes what the designer was expressing. I do not mean the fact that the arm is moving, but you, the viewer, are expressing a value judgment by putting the arm in a particular spot. The ability for the arm to move may also express something from the designer. But for something to be art, I do not think anyone except the artist can have a say to -any- extent about -what- is being expressed."

Edited July 29, 2009 by Eiuol

[Andrew Grathwohl]

What brought me to ask my question is an e-mail correspondence I've been having with someone. This comment I made both clarifies what I mean by "interactive art" and why I was thinking it is not a valid concept (as in, art is the wrong word to use). It may be better to say that if you interact with something, does that disqualify it from being art? Doesn't interacting imply a change caused by the viewer, therefore altering an artist's metaphysical value judgments? This comment is in reference to a sculpture with parts that can be moved by a viewer.

"...In any piece of art, the viewer cannot alter what is in the art. No matter what the viewer thinks/feels/likes/enjoys will not have any affect on the art. In anything interactive, the user necessarily alters what is there. The designer probably begins with their own value judgments, but if you move an arm, it changes what the designer was expressing. I do not mean the fact that the arm is moving, but you, the viewer, are expressing a value judgment by putting the arm in a particular spot. The ability for the arm to move may also express something from the designer. But for something to be art, I do not think anyone except the artist can have a say to -any- extent about -what- is being expressed."

I think this is an archaic approach to understanding interactive art, though, and completely ignores the fundamental concept of art being created by means of generative and algorithmic processes.

Simply put, in an interactive art work, the point of the art is to project something using interaction as a key component of that projection. The modifications a viewer can create are limited mathematically and artistically, and the artist creates a dynamic installation that vibrantly displays this interaction. In other words, the art is in the interaction. I think it would be incredibly easy to conceptualize the powerful messages an artist can project through interactivity.

[L-C]

a sculpture with parts that can be moved by a viewer.

I don't think that's an apt analogy. In many games, as a player you experience what the designer has set up for you. It's more like a movie that you can play and pause.

Some games give you more choice, and in some instances a lot more. But even then, the consequences of those choices (more appropriately named options) are of the designer's choosing. And being able to portray the consequences of the actor's choices is a powerful thing.

[Eiuol]

I don't think that's an apt analogy. In many games, as a player you experience what the designer has set up for you. It's more like a movie that you can play and pause.

Some games give you more choice, and in some instances a lot more. But even then, the consequences of those choices (more appropriately named options) are of the designer's choosing. And being able to portray the consequences of the actor's choices is a powerful thing.

Well, pausing and playing doesn't alter anything about the movie, but moving an arm on a sculpture would. I suppose that the viewer has such minimal choice that such a movement does not sufficiently alter the work and still has particular value judgments. But doesn't any choice you make imply a metaphysical value judgment? And if this judgment alters a piece of work, wouldn't it be expressing the viewer's judgments for that period until it is in a "default state"? Providing someone with options is one judgment from the artist, which is necessarily followed by a choice that is a judgment from the viewer. Without the viewer, nothing can be expressed by them. In a game, without the player, there is nothing, period (there cannot be a consequence without a choice). Also, once a painting is created, it does not require a viewer to remain as art. I guess you're saying a fusion of viewer and artist still allows it to be art, even though two of its characteristics are different than art as we commonly know it?

[Jackethan]

In response to that email correspondence, Louie, the point is quite silly. He's saying that because you can push the a button to jump in the game you have more control as a player than the designer does over the content and meaning of what's happening. A game is exactly like any other kind of art, and the game designer maps out and catalogues all the possible choices the player is intended to have. That's they key word, the game designer -intends- to give a choice to the player. The choice the player makes alters the flow of -his- game experience yes, but the game itself, the code, is not changed. You do nothing in a video game that the game designers did not intend for you to do, and in the rare cases that you do, they are called bugs, but that doesn't make the game not art, it makes it poorly made art if none of the bugs are fixed.

[Jonathan13]

I thought that it should be noted on this thread that Rand's play Night of January 16th was "interactive" in that audience members were chosen to become jurors in the play, and they were asked to come to their own verdict, which could result in different endings to the play.

J