Concept of interactivity
In the English Oxford dictionary, the word interactive is defined as two people or things influencing each other, or two way flow of information between a computer and a computer user. This definition of interactivity is too narrow to interpret all processes what happens when interactivity occurs.
Arjen Mulder writes that “interactivity is a concept, a way of working.” In other words, interactivity is an idea and its representation. Interaction requires an object that people could interact with or through. Therefore interactivity can be achieved in any medium: painting, sculpture, computer, electronics etc. Arjen Mulder describes two forms of interactivity: first, behavioral interactivity and second, often forgotten one, formational interactivity.
Behavioral interactivity
Arjen Mulder explains interactivity using the biologist’s Jacob von Uexküll example with tick. A tick sits at the end of a branch and falls of jumps off as soon as it smells butyric acid. The tick’s senses register what Uexküll calls “perceptual signs” from the outside world and converts them into “operational signs,” or specific actions. Arjen Mulder writes that life consists of discovering perceptual signs that could be converted into operational signs. He elaborates further: “To live is to interact, and interaction means discovering perceptual signs you can convert into operation signs, things you have to do, agency.”
Creating an interactive art work means making perceptual signs that allows a range of responses. Operational signs are unpredictable because they are a part of an environment of other people, not of the artist. It is because an artist cannot build a model of every viewer’s environment, he cannot see into their minds. Therefore, an interactive artwork is never completed, every interaction is different and a final state is never reached.
Formational interactivity
The second form of interactivity, Arjen Mulder describes as “interactivity that produces form”. He calls this form – finding interaction “formational interactivity”. Art is about material form, and material is the combination of matter and energy that is able to organize itself. Arjen Mulder explained form – finding further with examples where artists claim that they let their work to design itself. One of these artists is Kandinsky. He saw form - finding as the job of painting. Kandinsky saw the plane as a living being where primitive organisms (point and line) organize themselves and give birth to a new living organism. Other examples that Arjen Mulder gives areAntonio Gaudi, Frei Otto and Lars Spuybroek, for them form – finding is an architectural working method. They allow their buildings to design themselves. Form – finding in literature is the situation when authors claim that their novels seemed to write themselves. This phenomenon requires intuition, perceptive mind and patience.ArjenMulder explains this phenomenon: “the artist’s craft involves matter and energy informing the artist as much as him or her informing and giving form to them.” Interactivity means changing each other.
Communication is interactivity
According to Arjen Mulder,communication by changing each other is a definition of interactivity and interactive art. We communicate with each other by using metaphors and we understand each other by using the same metaphors. Changing each other by communication means constantly accepting and finding new metaphors.According toArjen Mulder, we need outsiders and strangers if we want to keep our metaphors flexible. Therefore we have art that expresses feelings, emotions and experiences that can hardly be converted into language. Art allow us to transmit presentational knowledge.
In the case of painting communication occurs through decoding the meaning in it. That meaning always spurs the viewer to do some work, generate attention, to begin investigation of the world.Ken Smith writes: “to interpret the meaning that is expressed through every visual element: shapes seeming to move interactively with internal tensions, line dancing with line, colour pushing and pulling the eye, and illusionistic clues to space in tensions with the paper<… data_liveedit_tagid="000000000B53F230">It is the viewer’s responsibility to focus on these tensions and interpret their role in communication.”
Painting and interactive art takes the line as a model. This is why according to Arjan Mulder, Kandinsky is so interesting today: “Kandinsky figured out how the line operated in the two-dimensional force field. Interactive art continues itsresearch in a three-dimensional possibility space. The focus is still line, woven and spun out into a network this time.”
Interactive art craves possibilities for action by human beings and objects, human beings and media, human beings and networks. An interactive work is successful if it manages to create something that was not present before the interaction. Arjen Mulder describes it as follows: “Interactive art’s object of investigation is the ability of materials and processes to create new virtual spaces of behaviour or open them for shared use.” When the mind is triggered by an interactive work and it becomes active, communication turns into interaction. Interactivity and visual perception
Interactivity and visual perception
Susanne K. Langer’s philosophy resulted in a new understanding of visual perception and interaction with the viewer, provoking significant changes in art. Her theorygave tools to artists to create interactivity with a viewer. Susanne Katherina Langer was an American philosopher, who wrote about mind and art. Her philosophy explores the continuous process of meaning – making in the human mind through seeing one thing in terms of another. She writesabout the process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind. Susanne Langer was one of the first philosophers who explored the concept of virtual. Her publications offeresthe reader a systematic, comprehensive theory of art applied to painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, dance and film.
What does it mean; the continuous process of meaning making in the human mind through seeing one thing in terms of another? To begin with we have to realize that fixed form does not exist. The idea that there is such a thing as stableform is only the assumption. That would suggest the idea that vision is not dynamic.In this perspectivevisionis passive, simply registering something that is just there. But Susanne Langer reminds us that we see things we do not actually see.We all know it, but we tend to call it an illusion. That raises the question about the nature of our perception. It also suggests the ideathat vision is actually dynamic itself.
“Susanne K. Langer’s example of spiralling, vegetal motifs we see in a lot of traditional decorative art states obvious: we do not see spirals we see spiralling. We see a movement that flows through the design.” Forms are not moving but we also cannot ignore the fact that we see a movement when we look at them. Can we call it an illusion?
In the interview with Brian Massumi, who refers to Langer’s philosophy, this seeing of movement in a motif is explained as abstraction: “Instead of calling it an illusion – this movement that we cannot actually see but cannot not see either – why not just call it abstract?” Massumielaborates further that reality and abstraction supplement each other. He explains that we see movement because of design being there and if we saw an actual design we would not be seeing what it is we are seeing – a motif.
Seeing is something that we do, it is a kind of action. We do not just register the surface of what we see, we see a potential of our bodies for example to walk around. Seeing an object is seeing through its qualities. If it is a 3D form we see volume, we see the other side without actually seeing it. Brian Massumi explains this quality of seeing as follows: “With every sight we see imperceptible qualities, we abstractly see potential, we implicitly see a life dynamic, we virtually live relation…<> It’s an event. An object’s appearance is an event, full of all sorts of virtual movement. It’s real movement, because something has happened: the body has been capacitated. It is been relationally activated. It is alive in the world, poised for what may come. This is also “seen” – there’s a sense of aliveness that accompanies every perception. We don’t just look, we sense ourselves alive.” This is the aliveness what Susanne Langer explored. The philosopher wrote that paintings create virtual spaces: the space in a painting is not the real (flat) space of the canvas, but the virtual or imagined space the viewer sees.
Susanne K. Langer’s philosophy and Gestalt theory gave us a new understanding of visual perception. It resulted in a capability to show life dynamics with and through actual form and take viewer to virtual space.
