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TopArtefactocentrism
Artistic practice enhanced by technology registers multifaceted and contradictory ways of doing things, convergences, hybridizations and crossings.
In the many approaches to the concept of media-art as a delimitation of artistic practices that use technological resources, the aggregating element can be found in the figure of the interactor.
Thus, the viewer is linked to these poetic propositions, not only as an observer who decodes, interprets, analyzes and criticizes, but also as the activator of the work. Without him, the work remains hidden.
In the introduction of a text in which Erick Felinto (2013, p. 121) speculates about the aesthetic dimension of error and noise as poetic foundations that can be thought of positively, he states that not only is the development of technologies overwhelming, but so are the concepts themselves which define phenomena related to the new media.
In the relationship between art and technology, artefact is the term we favour and which is associated with interactive computational artwork.
The word artifact stems from the Latin words ars and facere, which put together means as much as ‘artificially made’, or ‘made by human practice’. In traditional media theory, the term artifact refers mostly to an inaccurate, unwanted effects resulting from a (not perfectly working) technology. Attempts to use these artifacts as creative tools can be seen throughout art history and popular culture. (Rosa Menkman, 2010)
The Sopro artefact, which is dissected in this study incorporates an interface, a technological device that allows interaction between viewer and work, an interactive video installation, triggered by the interactor’s breath.
The interface emerges from this interactive experience, not only because of its conventional mediating role, that of a medium that shows moving images triggered in an unusual, almost magical way – by blowing – but also because, as we will see, it becomes manifest by the difficulties it causes in the interactor.
Digital technologies and computational processes have enhanced both the viewer's tangibility with the interactive work as well as the translatability of his presence into numerical language.
Qualitative investigations of the phenomenon of interactivity point to a continuous improvement in the connections between interactor and machine, in the sense of realism (Pold, 2005) and of its naturalization, seeking to make interfaces more engaging (Pais, 2014, p. 179 apud Fells, 2000) or increase their immersion levels (Pais, 2014, p. 179, apud Costello, 2005).
On the path of interfaces towards realism, Soren Pold (2019) upheld that “realism for the interface draws on an engineering tradition that aspires to make itself disappear in the name of an ideal of ‘transparency’” (2019, p. 74). However, in view of the expansion of contemporary interface, which is increasingly abstract and is being transferred to the cloud, finding new ways to hide (Pold, 2019), Pold feels the need to renew his thesis: “The metainterface paradigm currently aims to be both omnipresent and invisible, at once integrated into everyday objects and at the same time characterised by hidden exchanges of information” (ibid., p. 74).
However, it was not this questioning that triggered the design of our project or guided our research. A question prior to our study of the artefact “what to do with the media?” instigated artistic practice with new media, at the same time as opening a research path into the way the artists have incorporated media into their practices.
Yet, with the development of the Sopro artefact, we defined that aspiration. With our critical focus on the tensions established between the phenomena of art and technology, we started to discuss the role of the interface in interactive works, particularly those that use moving images like interactive video installations. We hypothesized the possibility of interference of the interface towards the work. In this context, the issues of invisibility and ubiquity become raw material.