[FLASH VERSION]


REACTIVE ART ... MEANS NOTHING WITHOUT YOU

WHAT:
The San Francisco Media Arts Council (SMAC) will host an exclusive exhibition of reactive artworks and a discussion exploring concepts and developments in Reactive Art in the context of our current cultural climate and the field of interaction design.

WHEN:
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Exhibit opening and reception: 6 – 8:30 p.m.

Friday, January 24, 2003
Exhibit open to the public, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Saturday, January 25, 2003
Exhibit open to the public, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Conversation with the artists, 3 – 5p.m.

WHERE:
The Schwab Room at SFMOMA
151 Third Street, San Francisco

ADMISSION:
Purchase tickets online for the Discussion with the Artists on January 25th
Suggested donation / cash box at all other exhibit times

WHO:
Works by Jim Campbell, Scott Snibbe, and Crevice, Conversation with the Artists and Designer Bill Moggridge

This event is organized by SMAC Event Co-Chairs Neil Kaye, Rachel Strickland, and Alissa Bushnell, with SFMOMA Media Arts Curator Benjamin Weil, Stephanie Knecht and Nathalie Dubuc. This event was made possible by the generous contribution of Ryan Associates General Contractors. Website design by Joshua Zabel

SMAC is a group of new media experts and enthusiasts who produce events, publications and activities to enhance the experience and understanding of new media in the arts. SMAC’s goal is to cultivate the incredible wealth of art and technological resources in the San Francisco Bay Area, fostering a closer relationship among technology and art communities.

BRIEF:
“Interactive computing” once referred to the paraphernalia and procedures which enabled reciprocal data entry and output between a machine and its human operator. A keyboard, pointing device, and some lines of alphanumeric text were typical terms of this to and fro. As the relationship evolved, cognition made its way into our definitions of “human computer interaction,” with a shift of emphasis from the mechanics of the process to its conceptual accessibility. And eventually the nature of data extended to pictures, sounds, and 3-dimensional space. Today interactive technologies have evolved into a medium through which we interact not so much with our computers as with other people and with our environment. The computer itself has become an interface to culture. As wireless networks, body-sensing apparatus, and smart appliances proliferate, the old challenge of exchanging messages with a machine has given way to a scenario in which the machines are capable of tracking our every move.

Some artists wholeheartedly embraced the interactivity proposition. If viewers as co-creators could shape the flow of events, then—it was assumed—their engagement with the work would be enhanced. Other, more circumspect artists noted that the act of choosing does not necessarily yield an aesthetic experience, or add meaning to the observer’s process of apprehension.

Media artist Jim Campbell, for one, has dispensed with the premise of user control in favor of systems that measure and respond to changes in their surroundings. Campbell points out that the “choice and command” interface suitable for word processing, data management, or playing games usually fails as a metaphor for dialogue or for adaptive unfolding. “Attempting to create systems that respond and progress in recognizably non-random, but at the same time unpredictable ways, I have tried to create works that have destinies of their own.”

Rather than requiring viewers to choose from a predetermined set of prerecorded outputs, the “reactive artwork” poses a system in which viewers’ actions constitute an integral yet extemporaneous component, and it displays an immediate reflection of a state in perpetual change. Through mimicking and engaging our cognitive faculties, such work prompts us to examine our habitual ways of perceiving, while it invites improvisation, resulting in potentially lyrical, multi-sensory meditations on the nature of reality.

These concepts, as well as themes of perception, memory, control, and everyday space, are common to the sensor-laden media artworks of Campbell, Scott Snibbe, and Crevice, a Toronto-based art collective.

Campbell’s clockworks manipulate our sense of time, compelling us to recalibrate the way we experience it. Snibbe and Crevice’s installations experiment with the spatial properties of camera and projection frames, and invite viewers to act on the screen. Such works, says Snibbe, “increase their compositional complexity, salience, and meaning, as more and more viewers take part in them.”


Website design by Joshua Zabel