This website is a collection of examples of participatory art, the type of art that is incomplete without the viewers' physical interaction with it.
Although the examples that belong to my definition of participatory art may not be yours and vice versa, this project "What is Participatory Art?" displays work that makes the tension evident in trying to define participatory art [1]. In doing this project, I open up a conversation about definitions of participatory art, pursue negotiation over examples and encourage viewers to submit work that they classify as participatory art. Through viewing and vetting examples, we have the opportunity to negotiate the different meanings of participatory art and to create a "gallery" site of such work that cultivates emotions and ideas and make our experiences alive [2].
Compared to participatory art, non-participatory artwork seems to have several disadvantages. On the one hand, it oftentimes is exhibited in ways that makes the artwork distant from the masses; this distance creates a one-way communication from the dominant active artists to the passive anonymous audience members [3]. On the other hand, the artists are likely to suffer from being “but an impotent agent at the mercy of the public’s good opinion” [4].
At first glance, participatory art may be viewed as “the artists’ easy way out” as it can hardly “fail” [5] in the traditional sense—any response is in itself a response to an open invitation.
Yet, as much as participatory art frees the artists from the audience's judgment, it invites the viewers to the same plane with the artists, creatively and critically. In other words, the power, generally beheld by the artist, is passed on to the audience along with trust and responsibility through participation.
And we participate with our hands, our bodies, our senses. Humans, through touch, have developed the means of inquiry as infants. Through evolution, our hands show us something about perception that’s hard to see with sight. Encountering the unknown, we touch. By tracing the border and exploring the texture [6], we hope that the physical contact can bring us closer to the matter in front of us.
Beyond the physical world, participation has extended to the cyber space via touching the screen or clicking the mouse. Almost as “extensions of the corresponding capabilities of the human body,” [7] technologies liberate restrictions in time and location of participatory art in the actual world.
The outcome, whether in the actual or virtual world, is shared among the audience. Creating artists’ ideas spontaneously as we receive them, we start from what is known, arrive at the unknown, and, thus, "evolve" the meaning of art [8].
This project is a growing organism. It archives the images you submit, circulates them online, opens up conversations about them and expands knowledge of participatory art.
I challenge us to test our boundaries between receptors and creators of art, if there is such a boundary at all.
I challenge us to think again before giving criticism, as they eventually become self-criticism because of our participation.
I challenge us to together become what we see.
To send me examples of participatory art, click the link
here, and I will add your submissions to the site. Or, send me your suggestions and comments about the project, I will keep updating and growing the project.
--Kuan Luo
References:
[1] Malcolm Miles, p84 “Critical Spaces” The Practice of Public Art
[2] John Dewey, Art as Experience. p14-15.
[3] Boris Groys, “A Genealogy of Participatory Art” The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, p20
[4] same as 3
[5] Rudolf Frieling, “Introduction,” The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, p13
[6] Barry Allen p21 Artifice and Design
[7] Groys, p30
[8] Sharon Irish p14 Suzanne Lacy: Spaces Between