Web Racket:
Contemporary Interactive Web Art
Media Space @ DeCordova/Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Gallery
June 8 – September 1, 2002
The Search for Interactivity
This device, which seems only to differentiate between zero and one, has not only a kind of intelligence, it selects. That makes it capable of choice, perhaps even an act of will.In 1965, Ted Nelson first used the term hypertext in a speech entitled, "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate." He later defined hypertext as "forms of writing that branch or perform on request; they are best presented on computer display screens." This idea of hyper-media grew out of the fact that computers can provide numerous links between pages of information, and that the viewer could use those links to explore the information in a nonlinear manner. This nonlinear exploration is called interactivity.
- Krzysztof Kieslowski, The Decalogue, Part I
While it can be said that we interact with books, movies, and board games, we do so in a mental or psychological way. The organizational power of the computer has created a new level of complexity that blurs the distinction between the reader (or viewer) and the author. Each person who interacts with a work of hypermedia can be said to create part of the experience because the path through the work that he or she has chosen is different from paths others might have followed.
In the four decades since Ted Nelson's idea, the computer has proved capable of many different types of interactivity. It started with simple text-based role-playing games, like William Crowther's and Don Woods's original Adventure and the Zork series by the Boston-based company Infocom. Also, MIT computer professor Joseph Weizenbaum's faux psychoanalyst software, called Eliza, carried on a conversation with seeming artificial intelligence. Simple computer games like Pong evolved into Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Serious interactive literature started with Michael Joyce's 1987 hypertext story, Afternoon.
The creation of the World Wide Web provided artists with a low-cost medium for interactive art that potentially reached millions of people. As a result, the number of artistsí interactive Web sites has exploded. There are thousands of sites of original art made on the Web and for the Web that take advantage of its clicking and linking capabilities. In ASCII, HTML, VRML, and Flash, each is trying to define the interactive artistic experience.
Interactivity is the great question of this newest art form: what form of interactivity will most engage the audience and provide a lasting aesthetic experience that is emotional, rich, and satisfying? After centuries of linear narrative and the painted square, artists are looking at ways for the art to engage the viewer and modify the artistic experience. The Shakespeare of interactivity has yet to be found, but this explosion of "art that talks back to you" makes the Web the place to look for that person.
What is interactive art? Two things seem clear. Within the experience of the art there is a modicum of choice for each viewer, and as a result of this choice, each individual experience of the work is potentially different. But these new environments also become complex dynamic systemsóvirtual worldsóin which people can interact with their surroundings and with each other.
This exhibition presents the work of five interactive artists who use different methods to explore how audiences converse with a work of art. While the idea of interactivity is one of the most seductive draws for digital artists, its structure can take many forms. For example, one of the Web pieces derives from a video game narrative, while another asks you to draw a memory.
George Fifield
Curator of New Media
