The 21st century will enter history books as the starting point of the post-virtual era: an age in which networks have become so present in everyday life, and the digitization of culture so extensive, that thinking in terms of a real/virtual dichotomy has become anachronistic.
The world of the Internet of Things is already announcing itself, and interaction mediated by connected devices is its access code. The small mobile phones inhabiting our pockets turn us into cyborgs and extend our bodies beyond the here, placing us in a time of eternal now.
Flexible screens of different sizes reshape notions of domestic space and privacy, while augmented-reality applications insert layers of information into the urban environment, redefining public space.
We live mediated by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and the internet is establishing itself as one of the privileged arenas for control, consumption and political mobilization.
In this context, interaction and interactivity become more than recurring words. They invade advertising discourse, become commodities of the computing and telecommunications industries, and consolidate themselves as dimensions of the mediated and mediatized sociability that sustains social networks such as Facebook.
This makes producing, evaluating and critically reflecting on artistic projects grouped under the heading of “interactivity” a complex challenge. After all, in a world where everything from the telephone to the television to the refrigerator promises interaction and connection, what deserves attention and reflection?
What has not already been delivered and promised by the seductive gadgets surrounding us and by the corporate structures through which we express and construct our subjectivities?
These questions informed the discussions of the Interactive Art jury of the Prix Ars Electronica 2011, of which I was a member. They were starting points for reflection and a selection process that favored projects capable of critically and creatively questioning the uses of media and networks, pushing the field of interactivity beyond the mere functionality embedded in industrial designs.
Works conceived not as objects in themselves but as devices, operating strategies, plans and actions that multiply meanings and repertoires. Works also capable of proposing new perceptual, cognitive, aesthetic and political dynamics. Works that seek to rethink interactivity in the field of agency through deviation and distributed intelligence. Artworks oriented not toward their capacity to be “empowered” by users, but toward empowering their participants.
In my presentation today at Itaú Cultural, I discuss a group of works and artists that, in very different ways, operate in this critical direction, proposing shifts from the notion of interactivity to that of agency.
The presentation slides are available at: