Healing Interactions and Interactive Digital Art. (News and Project Statement) (2001)

Interactive media has synthesized the traditional art forms of writing, music, painting, sculpture and the moving image. CD-ROM technology and the Web can incorporate 2D and 3D graphics, movies, animations, text and sound. An added tool to this mix has redefined the notion of artistic experience--user interaction, the user's power of choice to co-create a digital artwork within artist-defined parameters. User interaction includes clicking, dragging and dropping and roll-overs to modify on-screen elements. Physically interacting with on-screen-elements is an empowering act, because the user becomes cause in the scenario. In a digital interactive artwork, the user engages in an artistic feedback loop to transform artistic elements and relationships-- changes in color, shape, texture, text, iconic and textual menus, animation, music, sound, voice and screen transitions. The user makes choices about these over time, creating ever new and updated information configurations and perceptions. The user builds an iterative cycle of aesthetic relationships, and through this cycle of perception and co-creation, fulfills the meaning of the work. The power of choice in an interactive artwork is like a brush to a painter, chisel to a sculptor, pen to a writer or piano for a composer. The act of choosing allows for co-creation with the artist. I am not referring to video games or financial software, which are essentially about winning and entering/tracking of data. Interactive digital art differs from these in that it requires a series of transformations relying on the physical, contemplative and perceptual powers of the individual to unfold an aesthetic code in time and space through choice. If the artist creates a code or syntax (a group of navigational and interaction rules) by which the user relates aesthetic entities (shape, color, sound, text) through choice, the experience can be a healing journey because the user is accepting responsibility for co-creating unity through cause and effect. Note I say unity. A Dada-like approach to interactive art, where the user is free to click on pretty much anything and link to pretty much anywhere within the work, lacks a holistic creative vision and forces a kind of chaos on the user. The artist's role is the same as it ever was--to create clear boundaries (the aesthetic idea) realized through form and content where one finds a greater freedom and wholeness by interacting with an artistic vision, or metaphorical play. Someone who has knowledge of religious or spiritual mysteries is sometimes called a hierophant. This person has an ability to perceive the workings of inner forces behind physical realities. An artist-created code used to create an interactive digital artwork is like a hierophant. The hierophant can be an image, sound or text and remains in a frozen state until activated and initiated by the user. Once initiated (into the aesthetic mystery) by the user, the code moves invisible forces and qualities to modify physical onscreen elements. Each object, word or sound is in a sense sacred and can be used as a starting point for revelation of an aesthetic whole. In a digital interactive artwork the user co-creates the artwork, augmenting his or her perceptions along the way in an evolution of metaphor through the unfolding of harmonic relationships, toward unity. …