In 2004 Huhtamo returned to his happy place, the Prix Arts Electronica. But this time, to his dismay, he is awestruck to find that an artwork which he considered non-interactive, winning the Grand Prize in "Interactive Art." The piece was entitled Listening Post and was created by artist Mark Hansen. Basically it uses a computer to pull random text from various internet chat rooms, arranging them one word at a time onto a display consisting of hundreds of little LCD screens. Many audience members described the experience as meditative. Huhtamo's didn't see it the same way.
Huhtamo went into a whole long explanation about why the piece won but didn't deserve to win. First he looks at the Jury's perspective and finds that they have shifted their perspective and altered the definition of "interactive art" to include: 1. Computers as non-required, 2. The idea of "real-time" was relaxed and 3. passive interaction as allowed. Hutamo's response was -just make a whole new category of art already.
However, out of his frustration with the Listening Post , he does point out a lot of other interactive artworks that share things in common with the newly added rules. Like the fact that interactive art started before computers. But he still points out that its not interactive and is more like a painting in the sense that you just sense it and nothing more. Oh, and he doesn't like the idea about incorporating the internet either. Something about cybernetic organisms... and um John Connor? Might of just threw that in, anyways... Huhtamo finishes his argument with the statement that we should make a new category for things like the Listening Post that aren't up to his standards of interactivity.
So after reading that, I looked at some a couple of other Grand Prize winners for interactivity at the Prix Ars Electronica. First I looked at The Fulgurator which is this cool camera-gun thing that this guy Julius von Bismark made. It uses the cameras flash to flash words or images that are captured on film but too fast to be seen by the naked eye. It leaves a cool little image in "real-time."
The second artwork I looked at was called the EyeWriter and its a cool little mod this team of guys made out of existing technology. It allows artist who are paralyzed to draw with their eyes. The Eyewriter is pretty amazing. After watching the little video they made to demonstrate the technology, I was inspired. I mean, art is all about being able to express yourself. Developing something that allows someone to do that, especially for someone who thought they would probably never be able to express themselves ever again, is simply amazing.All in all, I don't see what Huhtamo is so worked up about. Interactive art is part of art which is defined by its ability to incorporate new ways of interactivity. In this era of high technology, it is no surprise that innovations in the field are going to happen fast. And not all of those innovations are going to fit nicely into the previously constructed category. I think the problem comes with trying to define any aspect of this realm of infinite potential and creativity known as art. Especially when you start to break things into categories such as "interactive." After all, anything that is art has to incorporate some level of interactivity, even if its just through your eyes, which can do much more than just look at things, as proven with the EyeWriter. I say we take some pointers from the some of the original curators of this type of art-form, like the Dadaist, and stop trying to define all our parameters.
