Interactive Art

"The term 'interactive art' serves as a genre-specific designation for computer-supported works, in which an interaction takes place between digital computer systems and users."

(Söke Dinkla: Pioniere Interaktiver Kunst von 1970 bis heute, Ostfildern-Ruit 1997)

In general, interactive art designates artistic projects based on interactions. Here we usually think of art works that require some kind of activity from visitors, which goes beyond a purely mental reception. However, works can also be termed interactive, which are based on interactions within technical systems.

Nevertheless, the term is often used especially to designate media art works, where these interactions are based on electronic or digital processes. This understanding is the basis of the definition from Söke Dinkla quoted above, and these kinds of works were clearly what the Ars Electronica also had in mind in 1990, when the category Interactive Art was introduced in the Prix Ars Electronica.

Interactive Art in the Prix Ars Electronica

"by establishing the prize for Interactive Art, the organizers of the Prix Ars Electronica have taken the lead in recognizing art works in a newly emerging art form."

(Roger F. Malina: The Beginning of a New Art Form, in: Leopoldseder, Hannes (Ed.): The Prix Ars Electronica. International Compendium of Computer Arts, Linz 1990)

Every year since 1987, the international juries invited by the Ars Electronica meet to review the growing number of entries in the competition and to nominate several outstanding works for the Golden Nica. The original competition categories Digital Music, Computer Animation and Computer Graphics were expanded in 1990 with the category Interactive Art. The first jury statement, published in 1990, explained this decision: "In recent years artists have begun to use the many new technologies that allow viewer interactivity to become an important part of the artwork. These new works are often in unusual formats, question the status of the observer, and require the development of new criteria for judging the work. The works submitted to the jury show the wide range of artistic tendencies for using these new interactive technologies in traditional art forms, but also point the way to new artistic tendencies which are made possible — many of these works would be impossible to create without the use of the computer."

The more artists have used technological feedback processes in their work since the 1990s, the clearer the discrepancy has become between the use of the term Interactive Art and the manifold denotations of the term interaction itself. Interactive Art has often been used as a limiting keyword for computer-based installations with human-machine interaction, whereas the term interaction is generally used to denote the most diverse forms of social, organic and technological interactions.

This has led to critical discussions of the term within the juries, and to attempts to redefine the category, for instance as the "broader definition of interactivity" was formulated by the jury of the Prix Ars Electronica 2004: the jury made "mediation by computer" no longer a necessary precondition, and argued that "constraints of 'real-time' and directness of interaction should be relaxed" and "passive interaction" allowed.

To date, in other words in nineteen years, over 27000 works have been entered in the category Interactive Art of the Prix Ars Electronica; there have been 20 Golden Nicas, 41 Distinctions, and 236 Honorary Mentions.

Assigning Keywords to the Winning Projects Using a Taxonomy

"lists like these serve two different functions: 1) they help organizers organize and 2) they encourage artists to do something 'unclassifiable'. Both are noble goals."

(Michael Naimark, email commentary on the research project of the LBI, 2007)

Considering that a precise definition of what is to be understood as Interactive Art is so difficult, it was especially fascinating to subject the works entered in the Prix Ars Electronica to a closer investigation. From 2007-2009 the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research undertook a project of assigning keywords. This serves a methodological engagement with the relevance of terminological systems for media art research and the differentiation of the heterogeneous field of art forms called interactive art, as well as a more detailed description of their aesthetic, technical and structural characteristics. Research into relevant terms was based on the evaluation of the archive material, an analysis of existing systems of terms, and statements from the jury members. The taxonomy developed on this basis (i.e. a hierarchical system of terms) now serves to assign keywords to the entries in the category Interactive Art in the archive of the Ars Electronica. On the one hand, since 2008 the artists have now been able to assign keywords themselves on this basis. On the other hand, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute has systematically assigned keywords to the winning projects and thus developed an important part of the archive.