Interactive Art
Description
Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Myron Krueger
Pioneer of 'responsive environments' and coiner of the term 'Artificial Reality'; created Videoplace (1974), a foundational work that allowed unencumbered, full-body interaction with digital environments.
Jeffrey Shaw
Leading figure in new media art who evolved from 1960s expanded cinema into sophisticated immersive digital installations; created The Legible City (1989).
Maurice Benayoun
French new-media artist and theorist who pushed boundaries of VR, telepresence, and brain-computer interfaces; created The Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995).
Char Davies
Canadian artist who created Osmose (1995), a landmark VR installation that used breath and balance - rather than joysticks - as navigation tools.
Scott Snibbe
Interactive media artist known for works like Boundary Functions (1998), where floor projections changed based on the physical positions of visitors.
Christa Sommerer
Media artist who, with Laurent Mignonneau, created biologically-inspired interactive installations such as Interactive Plant Growing (1992).
Laurent Mignonneau
Collaborated with Christa Sommerer on pioneering bio-interactive artworks that allowed viewers to influence virtual ecosystems through touch and gesture.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Mexican-Canadian artist known for large-scale interactive installations using tracking, projection, and biometric data in public spaces.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
Myron Krueger coined the term 'Artificial Reality' in the 1970s - years before Jaron Lanier popularized 'Virtual Reality' - to describe unencumbered environments where users interact through natural body movement rather than goggles and gloves.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
Char Davies deliberately chose breath as the navigation mechanism in Osmose to counter the disembodied, aggressive interaction models of conventional VR, drawing on her experience as a deep-sea scuba diver where buoyancy is controlled through breathing.
↗ Source: immersence.com
The concept of interactive art predates computers: mechanical musical boxes from 1796 and Marcel Duchamp's Rotary Glass Plates (1920) are cited as early examples of art requiring viewer participation to function.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org