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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00850
- Thesis Title
- From interaction to post-participation: the disappearing role of the active participant
- Author
- varvara guljajeva
- E-mail
- varvarag AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2018
- Number of Pages
- 200
- University
- Estonian Academy of Arts
- Thesis Supervisor
- Raivo Kelomees
- Supervisor e-mail
- raivo.kelomees AT artun.ee
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Pau Waelder
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English, Estonian
- Department / Discipline
- Art and Design, Doctoral School
- Copyright Ownership
- Varvara Guljajeva
- Languages Familiar to Author
- URL where full thesis can be found
- eka.entu.ee/shared/429088/GsqzlotFPrFi1tdtAmVX1Wo8cxFWi4iQjntDJcO4n0mE5NAx8K8pef9V3AC9k3lB
- Keywords
- Interactive art, post-participation, surveillance, interactive systems, hybrid art, practice-based research, post-digital
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- This practice-based research explores the shift from active to passive participation in interactive art. By exploring interactive art history and the discourse of identity within the field, this dissertation investigates how artworks that demonstrate no audience involvement, but still incorporate an internal system interaction with a data source, are addressed. In other words, the research tracks down the interest shift from human-machine to system-to-system interaction, and explores the reasons behind this.
In order to approach the paradoxical situation in interactive art, where the artworks that demonstrate no direct audience interaction are addressed as interactive, the term of post- participation is introduced and discussed in this thesis. Hence, the notion of post-participation helps to describe, analyse and ultimately contextualise artistic practice from the perspective of audience involvement and the participative input of interactive systems. What is different from an interactive artwork is the position of the audience in regard to the work of art. This position is not active or responsive, like an interactive art piece would require, but rather, it is passive. In other words, a post-participative artwork marginalises the active role of a spectator. Post-participative art responds to a different source of input, which is real-time data generated by the everyday behaviour of humans or animals.
Post-participation is largely connected to the surveillance age. Today being passive is the norm, which is emphasised in the presented artworks by using post-participation: a spectator participates without being aware of or having control over the participative act; instead, the focus lies in the interactive system, which applies post-participative input without the consent of an audience. In short, this thesis deals with the definition and contextualisation of post- participation as a concept, examines both its origins and a critical period of interactive art, compares participative, interactive and post-participative art, and finally, draws on the paradigms of surveillance age.
In the end, the dissertation contributes to the evolution of interactive art, by analysing and contextualising passive audience interaction in the form of post-participation. It argues that the concept of post-participation helps to address the shift from an active to a passive spectator in the complex age of dataveillance, an age in which humans are continuously tracked, traced, monitored and surveilled without our consent.