The Interactive Art Gambit

Ken Feingold (1991) The Interactive Art Gambit

“Where I first saw a computer touch screen positioned over an image wherein one was coaxed to ‘touch the image’, touch the object of desire. It seemed to be that the link between looking, wanting and touching connected quite directly to these fundamental urges. To touch to enquire, to investigate to examine the result of ones production…to affirm ones own existence in the world.”

I think that this concept is very interesting- everything that then Ken Feingold is saying is has a lot of meaning and resonates with me- we do touch things to explore them further and go get a deeper meaning from them. Touch, along with sight is one of our most important senses and we need it to examine and to make sense of our world.

Ken Feingold then goes onto to talk about how the interactive concept of interactivity engages the spectator in new and interesting ways. One example of this is when the author talks about Jasper Johns, who was an American contemporary artist.

“Johns most well known works which overtly evokes physical interaction was his 1960’s target. A framed unfinished watercolour of a target, below which are some small tins of colour and a brush. The obvious suggestion is that the painting itself is to be physically completed by another, unknown to the author.”

Here the artist is playing on the concept that the physical action is irreverent. It’s the ideas of the interaction, which is enough to carry the meaning of the work. The idea of the viewer participating in the work- this changes the whole perspective of the user/viewer to the author/creator.

Overall I found the concepts that Ken Feingold talks about very interesting and has a lot of relevance to my idea. The whole philosophy of making the viewer who is participating in the work into actually creating the work seems to be a sense the essence of interaction.