Art as a Living System: Interactive Computer Artworks

Abstract

During the 6 years of our collaboration, we have worked at the borderline of art and biology and have used biological principles to create interactive artworks. When we met in 1992 at the Frankfurt Städelschule Institut für Neue Medien [1], we came from different backgrounds: Laurent had worked with video, improvisation and performance while my background was in biology and modern sculpture. In our previous individual works, we both had shown strong interests in the structures of nature: Laurent's video work was influenced by the shapes and formations of earth movements, and I had been working for several years on a system called "Phyllologia" [2], which drew upon the leaf classification schemata of Carl Von Linné. These leaf forms were static, and I used them in light boxes and cut-outs. When I joined the Institut für Neue Medien in 1992, I planned to animate these leaf shapes. However, when Laurent saw my animations, he suggested actually growing these forms in real time instead of modeling them by hand-and the idea for our first collaborative work, Interactive Plant Growing, was born. Through Laurent's background in improvisation and electronics, we were able to design the system to be interactive, and from my background in botany I knew that plants could be used as living interfaces.After joining our interests in 1992 we decided to collaborate further and since then have produced several interactive artworks. Our goal was to create works that would become like living systems, addressing the question of life on a biological, as well as artistic and metaphorical, level.

A Survey of the Trajectories Conceptual Framework

“…One refers specifically to "interpretative trajectories" [80], building on Fosh [38]'s extensions of the framework. The other two draw additional concepts into their definition of trajectories: one [55] calls upon the concept of learning trajectories from educational research [23] and the other [87] on interactive artists' description of interactions as journeys [24]. These "composite" characterizations of trajectories are introduced early and are used throughout these papers.…”

A Classification Framework for Interactive Digital Artworks

“…We based the structure of our classification framework on the review of relevant literature concerning this theme [8,4,3,9]. Then our classification is validated by considering (a subset of) the artworks discussed in the IDA literature and showing that they can be grouped according to our classification in a meaningful way.…”

“…Previous work addressing our research goal was published in 1999 by Sommerer and Mignonneau [8], in 2002 by Hannington and Reed [4], in 2004 by Edmonds, Turner, and Candy [3], and in 2008 by Trifonova, Jaccheri, and Bergaust [9]. The main emphasis in all these classifications was on the user interaction.…”

“…The older classification in the literature is the one discussed in [8], addressing "interactive artworks". Since it is not focusing on the use of information technology it is not able to characterize its specific aspects.…”

From Interactive to Experimental Multimedia

“…These principles may apply to both narrow and wide human-computer interaction contexts (Nardi, 1996). Interestingly, some of the most informative examples of interactive multimedia system taxonomies were developed with multimedia art systems in mind as they pose complex and novel interaction requirements (Nardelli, 2010, Edmonds et al, 2004, Hannington and Reed, 2002, Sommerer and Mignonneau, 1999. This categorisation may be attributed to the fact that interactive new media art systems utilise technology in an experimental manner.…”