Scientist Vladimir Bonačić began his artistic career in 1968 under the auspices of the international New Tendencies movement (1961–1973/78). From 1968 to 1971 Bonačić created a series of “dynamic objects”  —interactive computer-generated light installations, five of which were set up in public spaces. The presentation shows his theoretical and practical criticism of the use of randomness in early digital art and describes his working methods as combining the algebra of Galois fields and an anti-commercial approach with custom-made hardware. Vladimir Bonačić’s artworks allow the user’s exact research leading to cognitive insights. Science has been humanized, and art has been scientized. Works have been realized through the use of machines, and their basic materials were time and light. They refer to the viewer as an active participant, sometimes in physical interaction with dynamic objects, and they are both socially engaged and democratic. It is possible to multiply the works by programming purpose-targeted software and constructing hardware.

In their media art, Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss explore innovative interfaces that merge emotional, technical, and artificial intelligence to provoke reflection and discovery. Their concept of the “performative interface” moves traditional paradigms of human-machine interaction from “what you see is what you get” to “what you get is what you haven’t seen yet”. Central to their projects is the notion of a “thinking space. This space is intended to be a stimulus for reflection and a counter to the dehumanization of the digital realm. Their research is concerned with the cultivation of cognitive processes in the age of pervasive automation. Like cultural hacking, they offer participatory experiences as cultural interventions.

https://www.fleischmann-strauss.de
https://digitalartarchive.at/magazine/fleischmann-strauss/

In 1992 Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau developed the interactive art work Interactive Plant Growing. In this installation visitors can touch real plants and thereby grow various artificial plants on a large projection screen. The voltage differences between the visitors´ bodies and the real plants is captured and used to modulate the growth of an ever changing virtual garden. Interactive Plant Growing was first shown in the US from 1^st – 6^th August, 1993 at ACM Siggraph´s iconic Machine Culture exhibition which was organized by Simon Penny in Anaheim, California. In this talk we will describe how the installation works, what impact it had and how it is still exhibited to this day.

I will discuss three interactive works I created prior to 2000. “Labyrinthos” was an architectural computer-controlled maze of locking and unlocking doors, featuring a video surveillance system and exhibited in 1983 at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. The “Automatic Confession Machine: A Catholic Turing Test” was exhibited in the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery in 1993 as part of the “Machine Culture” show curated by Simon Penny and exhibited again in the ACM-SIGGRAPH 2007 Art Gallery curated by Vibeke Sorensen. The third work is the Split-Brain Dichoptic Human Computer Interface where a working prototype was first realized at the Banff Centre in 1999 (and originally titled “Anita und Clarence in der Hölle: An Opera for Split Brains in Modular Parts”) and was last exhibited in the group show “Sleuthing the Mind” at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery in 2014 curated by Ellen K. Levy.

I have been continually producing telematic telepresent artworks since the 1990s but in recent years I am occasionally asked if my audiences respond differently today because of the ubiquity of Zoom. The short answer is no! These telepresent installations are everything that video chat is not. My telematic artworks have been and continue to be intimate phenomenological encounters between the self as other and another participant in a coexistent third space. Zoom, conversely, has condemned us to boxes of talking heads. Amongst others, my Telematic Vision (1993) installation is not merely concerned with networked communication, it is often produced between two adjacent rooms, as was recently the case for Topologies of the Real: Techne Shenzhen 2023. In this instance, the specular television image is the portal to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘extension of bodily synthesis’ and has more in common with Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha than it ever will with Zoom.

This conversation covers years of evolution from score-based fixed music composition to interactive media that freed the composer and performer from the rigidity of time and allowed the audience to interactively be part of the piece. There was always some component of interactivity in musical performance, however the composition of the work was solely in the hands of the composer, and the audience was a passive listener.  With the advent of computer music on main frame computers, interactivity came to a standstill as main frame computers in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s took the field into the non-real time domain of tape music. In the late 80’s and 90’s this dilemma began to be addressed by the technological advancements in real-time interactive control of digital technologies. As these technologies advance in the 2000’s, interactivity and generative composition facilitates a unique integration among the composer, performer, and the audience.