A Work to Finish
For the most part, art is thought of as something to be hung on a wall or placed on a pedestal. It was created to be admired and contemplated, in the halls of well known museums and galleries. The relationship between a work of art and its viewer has been pretty clear. The viewer finds the art, in its place of honor. They observe it; maybe think of how and why it was made, perhaps even think about purchasing it. If the viewer is lucky, the piece intrigues them enough to stay a bit longer, and ponder the story that unfolds in front of them. Then after just a short time, the viewer moves on to another piece and the interaction ends there. From this typical relationship, we can assume that most artists hope to evoke a reaction from their viewer, to hold their attention for just a bit longer. But the viewer remains a viewer and eventually moves on to the next piece.
With contemporary technologies, it has become common to connect interactive art with some sort of computer interface or digitalization. With the use of machines, a static piece of art becomes dynamic when interacted with and when left, almost reflexively, it often returns to its original state. Brigid Costello, Lizzie Muller, Shigeki Amitani, and Ernest Edmonds, studied the experience of interacting with such art. In particular they analyzed the observations of artist Sidney Fel. He examined random viewers interacting with different versions of his Imascope through a hidden camera. The work itself acted like a kaleidoscope, changing based on how a viewer was moving and projecting a complex and abstracted image back to them. Once the viewer moved away from the camera the image would return to its original static state, ready for its next visitor. After examining his footage, Fel pinpointed four relationships between interactive art and its audience; response, control, contemplation, and belonging. During the first relationship, response, the viewer perceives the art object as separate from them, and finds themself in conversation with the piece. By the second relationship the viewer feels in control of the object, as if it is an extension of them with which they are able to play. The third relationship, contemplation, is less interactive; the viewer feels relaxed and separate from the object again, almost like a viewer to a painting contemplating what the art object is communicating to them. Fel’s fourth relationship, belonging, is said to be the most interesting and hardest to achieve. It involves giving the object control and embodying its message. Through their research, Costello and his colleagues were able to observe all of these relationships involved in the experience of interacting with a piece. While these relationships are most prominent in a technology based medium, there are similar relations played upon in other art forms.
Some artists invite viewers to physically immerse themselves in the art instead of just observing reactions. Lee Boroson of Brooklyn, New York invites his audience to actually walk through parts of his work by creating large- scale installations out of materials like inflatables, fabrics, plastics, and light. In is exhibition of Plastic Fantastic at Mass MoCA, he surrounds his audience with his creations, conjuring four different environments Moisture Content, Deep Current, Uplift, and Subterranean Set. Each section is centered on the idea of nature, from air to water, earth and fire and as the viewer reaches the last section, these sections come together to form a whole landscape. Borson creates a phenomenological relationship, or a relationship that draws on humans and their awareness of objects around them. For him, the viewer’s journey through the piece and their awareness of their surrounding becomes the key player of the interaction.
Moving away from being physically encompassed by a piece, some artists have created works for a community to respond to and build upon. Dorota Grabkowska of the United Kingdom, and Kuba Kolec of Sweeden came together to design a piece where their viewers not only examined their piece ‘WHAT MADE ME,’ but were asked to participate in its creation by answering questions and connecting sections of the piece together with colored strings. The piece was created specifically as an interactive work for the ‘Birmingham Made Me Design Expo.’ Unlike pieces such as Fel’s Imascope, which reflexively returns to its original state after the viewer has left, a viewer’s interaction with Grabkowska and Kolec’s work remains intact and traceable. In a way, their piece acted similarly to a survey, with multiple people answering one of the five questions: What made you think? Create? Angry? Happy? Or Change? A sort of multi-layered data map was created displaying the different ‘shapes’ of the people who participated. By the end of the exhibit it had become a visual representation and record of community influences and ultimately a community effort to complete the piece.
All of the art works described serve their own purpose of relationship from warping perspective, reflecting movement, encompassing an environment, and creating a new method of representing a community. But each of the viewer’s interactions and relationships with the art is fleeting. The viewer plays their small role and eventually moves on to the next piece. With her interactive work, Emily Boughton attempts to push and prolong this interaction or relationship between art and the viewer even further almost to a more permanent state. The images and texts incorporated into her piece, ‘Figure Me Out’ range from intricate gardens and bridges, to sparse portraits, and abstracted structures or nature; all images easily found in everyday life. But this book is not meant to simply be admired; instead her audience is invited not only to look through these images and texts, but also to finish many of them.
Boughton provides the supporting structure; lines, colors and text that act only as the ground for a piece to sprout from. She suggests that there is a beauty to be found in the unfinished, for it means that there is room for both the art and the artist to grow. By adding their own perspectives onto these common place images through coloring, painting, drawing, or writing to finish a page, the viewer becomes an artist themselves. The work moves beyond the act of simply filling in the lines of a coloring book and towards a more therapeutic approach and experience. If Boughton’s instructions for reflection are heeded, the viewers’ interaction with her work echoes the founding thoughts of informal art therapy.
The American Art Therapy Association writes that through the use of art and the creative process, individuals can explore their feelings, solve internal conflicts, gain self-awareness, and find a variety of other benefits when working with an art therapist. Margaret Naumburg, one of the key founders of art therapy, believed that we could look to the images we create as windows into our unconscious and that ultimately any image is an attempt to communicate some message. Whether or not we agree fully with Naumburg’s Freudian based ideas, the practice of art as a therapy in undoubtedly helpful. Boughton brings this practice out from a clinical office setting and creates a brief translation of it in an easily accessible format.
For every individual interacting with Boughton’s work, a single page can provoke a variety of reactions. Two people looking at the same image could choose to finish it in very different manners based on their own experiences. They may even initially choose different pages to focus on. Their choice of medium, colors, expression of line, and how much of the image they fill, could all be indications of mood, inner-conflicts, and other thoughts. Examining and reflecting on these decisions, and the resulting image, opens a door of new understanding for the new artist. While the artist may choose to display their work for others to see, the judgment free atmosphere of a therapy also easily remains intact by simply keeping the end results of their work personal.
By providing this base structure and means of reflection, Boughton provides her audience with the means to transcend the traditional relationship between art and its viewer, and even that between the artist and the art. The viewer breaks from the trend of being a passive observer, or simply one point on the arts timeline, and intimately becomes an integral part in the arts’ completion and their own means of self discovery.
Works Cited
AATA. (2014, January 1). American art therapy association .What is art therapy. Retrieved November 21, 2014.
Costello, Brigid, et al. "Understanding the experience of interactive art: Iamascope in Beta_space." Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment. Creativity & Cognition Studios Press, 2005.
“Lee Boroson: Plastic Fantastic.” MASS MoCA. MASS MoCA, 2014. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.
Noe, Alva. "EXPERIENCE AND ITS OBJECTS." Lee Boroson. N.p., 2005. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.
Rubin, J. (2001). Approaches to art therapy: theory and technique (2nd ed.). New York, New York: Routledge.
“WHAT MADE ME Interactive Public Installation.” Behance. N.p., 4 July 2012. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.