Trans-action: an actor-network approach to interactivity in the visual arts Mark Cypher MVA, Sydney University GradDipSecEd, Edith Cowan University BA (Fine Arts), Curtin University This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The University of Western Australia The School of Architecture and Fine Arts Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support of my wife Bianca Cypher who gave me the time and space to finally finish this work . I would also like to acknowledge my supervisor Associate Professor Dr Ian McLean, and others who have helped along the way, in particular Dr Nigel Helyer. Summary The dissertation research consists of creative and written components. The creative component includes an interactive DVD, titled Trans-actions , which consists of video, audio and technical documentation of several interactive artworks and their exhibition, which is an integral component of this research. The importance and complexity of interaction as a phenomenon in itself cannot be fully understood as an idea alone, unless one is subjected to the persistent multiplicity of its effects in practice. This is where the full implication of the Actor-Network (ANT) method, of "following the actors" in practice, is sharply felt. Both the artwork and the writing were developed more or less simultaneously, in which the artworks provided a sort of test case (also important to the ANT method) and means of 'thinking' through the different kinds of actorial, spatial, temporal and material effects generated in interactive artworks. The discursive component (59,000 words) uses an Actor-Network method to develop the idea that the making and exhibition of, and interaction in, participatory artworks is more adequately described when approached with the notion of trans-action. Central to the idea of trans-action is the intimate exchange and mutual ordering that takes place when actors come together to collectively make something happen. This idea, along with the many others documented throughout this work, would not have been possible were it not for the nexus created via the actual practice of making artwork and its relation to discourse. Declaration All the creative work presented in the DVD was produced by myself with assistance in programming from Adrian Boeing. This work has not previously been submitted for examination. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signed: Date: 31/03/2011 Abstract In mapping the generative effects of interactive artworks, this dissertation delineates interactivity according to its distributive actions, cognition and embodiment. These distributive effects are explained in terms of Actor-Network Theory. The dissertation examines historical notions of participation and interaction in the visual arts and considers the Systems and Cybernetics art movements of the 1960s to be important precursors to a continuum model, and thus actor-network description, of interaction. Contemporary notions of interactivity in the visual arts are also questioned, particularly in relation to how the discourses of art theory, sociology, computer science and human computer interaction have generally articulated interactivity as socially constructed, made of separate bounded components, intrinsically linked to technology, primarily immaterial and with inputs and outputs that do little to explain the actual interaction. An actor-network approach is used to investigate how subjects and objects in participatory and/or interactive artworks actually interact. The description that follows implies that ’interaction’ in artworks is a complex form of trans-action. This is a collective action that requires intimate exchange and reciprocal adjustments, and connotes a complex set of mediations implied by an actor-network description. Trans-action, therefore, places the emphasis on the vast array of entities that stretch across variations in space, time, materials, actors, distributed agencies, cognitive abilities and embodied qualities – not just the technology. As such, the notion of trans-action is used to describe the collective effect of the exchange and reciprocal action of actors of all kinds embodied in interactive artworks. Exhibitions linked to the dissertation research Exhibitions The BeapWorks Exhibition 'Biophilia' at the John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Western Australia, Sept 2005. The 404 II International Festival of Electronic Art , Exhibition 'Biophilia' at the Patio De La Madera, Rosario, Argentina Oct 2005. The VII Salon International De Arte Digital Exhibition 'Biophilia' at the Cubasí Portal of ENET / ETECSA April 2006. The Siggraph 2006 Intersections Exhibition, 'Biophilia', Siggraph Art Gallery , Boston, USA , April 2006. The FILE 2006 (International Electronic Language Festival) Exhibition, 'Biophilia' at the Sesi Paulista's Espacio Cultural, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2006. The BeapWorks Exhibition 'Concrescence' at the John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Western Australia, Sept 2006. The NewForms06 Exhibition, 'Concrescence' at the Video Out gallery, Vancouver Canada, Oct 2006. The Collision 06 conference, 'Concrescence' at the University of Victoria, Canada, Oct 2006. The Bios4 Exhibition, 'Biophilia', at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville , Spain Aug 2007. The Computational Aesthetics conference, 'Concrescence' at the Banff Centre, Banff, Canada 2007. The Haptic 07 Exhibition, 'Concrescence' at the, ZeroToOne Gallery, Kitchener, Canada, 2007. Trans-action: an actor-network approach to interactivity in the visual arts Introduction 1 Chapter One: Actor-Network Theory 16 1.1 Social Construction 18 1.2 Sociology of Scientific Knowledge 19 1.3 Laboratory Life and Actor-Network Theory 20 1.4 Semiotics and Actor-Network Theory 24 1.5 Symmetry and Actants 27 1.6 Translation 28 1.7 Shifting Out/ Delegation 30 1.8 Circulating Reference 34 Chapter Two: Interactivity in the visual arts 40 2.1 Interactivity in the visual arts: a short history 42 2.2 Some Models of Interactivity 49 2.3 Situated Action 54 2.4 Activity Theory 55 2.5 The continuum model: Re-configuring the user 57 2.6 Contemporary Interactivity in the visual arts: the limitations 58 Chapter Three: An actor-network approach to participatory and interactive 65 artworks 3.1 The case of Biophilia - a collective composition of goals and distributed action 66 3.11 The Prototype 71 3.12 Intersections exhibition Siggraph Art Gallery, Boston USA 73 3.13 Goal translation - cumulative influence and distributed action 74 3.2 The case of Concrescence- reversible blackboxing and the unintentional 79 Chapter Four: 86 Delegation and the nature of trans-action 4.1 Delegation as the confluence of meaning via actors, spaces, times and materials 88 4.2 Material and Actor-Network Theory 93 4.21 The Myth of Immateriality 97 4.3 Trans-action 101 Chapter Five: Trans-action effects: distributed cognition and distributed embodiment in interactive artworks 106 5.1 Distributed cognition: where mind and information materiality trans-act 108 5.11 Enactive signification and the extended intentional state 113 5.2 Circulating references: distributed embodiment, distributed experience and the interactive artwork 116 Conclusion 121 List of Figures 129 Bibliography 130 Introduction In part, the motivation for this research stems from work undertaken in a Masters program almost thirteen years ago. The basic premise for that research was to investigate the subject/object divide that has pervaded the conceptualisation of Western epistemology since the Enlightenment, and the means by which the making and exhibition of contemporary sculpture subverted those categories, which was no small task. However, the research did open windows for me into the cultural and philosophical implications of such a divide and allowed me to explore sculptural situations in which this binary was deconstructed. Fast forward to now and instead of building static sculpture I find my practice embedded in the field of participatory or interactive media art. The interactive element in such art subverts the traditional subject/object distinction; both are changed and something else is created. The major effect was that the watertight nature of the conventional subject/object binary, which by default presumes an empty space or unbridgeable gap 'between' humans and objects, was in fact occupied ground, porous and transient – as if objects and subjects regularly acted as though conjoined in some way. More to the point was that the kinds of interactive situations that my practice evoked not only challenged subject/object definitions and distinctions but also placed interaction as a kind of making that was central to almost every aspect of an interactive artwork. As I began to read art and new media theory in the hope that I would be able to extend some of the ideas I was exploring in my practice, I soon realised that what I was thinking was increasingly out of step with how most writers envisioned interactive media practice. In terms of my struggle (like every art student) to conceptualise my practice it was heartening to see that I was not alone. In fact, there is a long chain of writers and artists who, since the 1960s, have set many precedents for alternative explanations of interaction in artworks. For example, the development of radically new types of interactive and participatory artworks in the 1960s led to the invention – by the likes of Jack Burnham and Roy Ascott – of a new vocabulary. References