EXPERIENCE ECONOMY
PLEASE TOUCH THE ART Lauren Anderson
A
n inquisitive child impulsively reaches toward a piece of artwork that has captured her imagination. Arms stretched out, she leans toward the gilded frame, anticipating touching the sinuous lines on the canvas created by the oil paints of an Impressionist artist. “Stop!” an anxious security guard shouts. The child turns away, as her hope of fully experiencing the art that has mesmerized her disappears. Met with commands of “Don’t touch the art!” from both the security guard and a parent surprised to find that their child has nearly gotten them removed from the museum, the child can only stare at the piece from a distance. Although she is free to admire the piece, she can neither fully interact with it nor fully immerse herself in it. Just a few blocks away, a visually impaired man touches a portrait designed to be tangible. A smile radiates across his face as he is finally able to immerse himself in art. This man, George Wurtzel, found a sense of identity and association through this interaction. The artist — Andrew Myers, a Laguna Beach based mixed media sculptor — had created a series of “screw paintings” designed specifically to be interacted with, and intended to help people foster a sense of identity when interacting with art. Not all art can be touched — nor should all art be. However, no hard and fast rule should define the way that people interact with art. Physical engagement integrates the observer and the art, creating an experience that cannot be recreated through mere appreciation from a distance. The ability to touch art makes it accessible to a variety of different communities and individual senses, creating a level of intimacy with the piece
beyond what observations can provide. The future of art is interactive: keeping art relevant will require institutions to embrace innovations that integrate art with physicality.
FROM STATIC TO INTERACTIVE Interactive art has its origins in the political and social movements of the ’50s and ’60s. Steeped in the new politics that flooded the world following World War II, the ‘happenings’ movement created a basis for the future of interactive art. These artists sought to use their events and installations to promote their often-extremist beliefs. The interactivity of performance and installation art proved to be an effective means to communicate the fear, excitement, and hope brought about by the uncertainties of uncertainties post-war era. Happenings forced spectators to become a part of the work itself. For example, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s infamous ‘bed-in’ in 1969 invited the public to watch them sit in bed as protest of the Vietnam War. Thus the public was forced to engage with the sentiments that characterized the non-violence and anti-war movements. The art world continued to shift from emphasizing the object created by the artist to emphasizing the artist’s intentions. Happenings sought to “replace the ‘artist as god’ idea with the ‘artist as facilitator and enabler of creativity,’” according to Ernest Edmonds, a professor of computational art at the Leicester Media School. Professor Edmonds, who was also awarded the ACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement In Digital Art, told the HPR that interactive art
SPRING 2018 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 5
