Abstract

An Aesthetics of Interaction and Participation? New Media Art, and Histories of Exhibitions.

Participatory art is much discussed, by theorists including Claire Bishop and Nicolas Bourriaud, but how might new media art, which has the inherent behaviours on connectivity, computability and interaction, inform these debates? How can art critics and historians deal with this post-medium condition of behaviours, and avoid a hype-cycle of misunderstood terms such as A.I. and Open Source?  Artworks by YoHa, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Osman and Omar Khan, and Thomson & Craighead are discussed, and help to establish critical categories for different kinds of participatory system.

How can histories of exhibitions dealing with interaction and participation inform the curation of new media art involving these behaviours?
Exhibitions of broadly conceptual or immaterial work such as Information (1970) and Les Immatériaux (1985) lead to an examination of exhibitions where participation is key, including Bodyspacemotionthings  (1971 and 2009), Serious Games (1996), 010101 (2001), and The Art of Participation (2008).