On Martin Rieser's Mobile Audience Blog, there are two articles about different installations allowing visitors/passers-by to create/manipulate images on the screen through movement. The basic idea is the same: the body of the on-looker (obviously, the term is here out-of-date) is used as a tool. The spectator (another "old" word) is somewhere between the artist and the work. He is at the same time the creator (since he is the one giving the actual form to the work) , the spectator/participant, and the work (since his interaction with the machine is also watched and admired by the other spectators). But was exactly is the difference between this situation and the one we encounter in many games, both classic and modern? Here you have the wonderful aesthetic experience - right? Wrong, at least according to the admirers of Blast Theory, the British high-tech theatre group which creates (among others) works right between the worlds of "high art" and down-to-earth entertainment, such as the famous Desert Rain. Actually, it isn't between those worlds, it equally participates in both.
1 comment:
I agree-Actually I interviewed Blast Theory for the new book, and they were fairly uninterested in these divisions between art and games, preferring to cite the emotional intensity and engagement of the experience
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