Erkki Huhtamo "Trouble at the Interface or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art"
Interactive art should be hands-on, says Erkki Huhtamo. Huhtamo says that though interactive art takes shape in many different ways, the core element is still being open to the public, and require the activation from the audience. That is, the piece is really complete once it is being acted upon by the audience. I guess this makes me think of cut piece by yoko ono, in which she had an audience come up to her and take scissors and cut her clothes off, piece by piece. That piece was kind of spooky, seeing people get inappropriate and eventually treating the artist as an object, i think largely because of mob psychology.Lev Manovich "Database as Symbolic Form"
Manovich discusses what a database truly is-- eventually looking at a database as a collection of data. He argues that databases, using algorithms, collect groups of items and make them operational and user friendly. These groups of items are also used to tell stories, but do not carry a strict narrative because the materials keep changing. As our society accepts digital artforms, databases are becoming more cultural. This kind of thing reminds me of tumblr, how everything that a person will reblog will show up in a list or a grid, and it can usually say a lot about a person, depending on what they reblog. talkin' about a tumblr as a database of work, i guess.Ars Combinatoria: Mystical Systems, Procedural Art, and the Computer
Marvin Minksy provides an anti-gestalt viewpoint of both art and the human mind. He proposes that the human mind is like a tower, composed of processes which he likens to blocks. Minksy likens people to machines, who act mechanically, though unexplainable. Similarly, Minksy says that art cannot be viewed on the surface level only. He argues that art should be broken down, with each little part contributing to an overall understanding of the piece. I'm reminded of one of victor vasarely's work, shown below. This piece appears to be an impossible 3D shape but it is in essence a bunch of squares in forced perspective. I want to know what Minksy would say about how the human mind sees this as 3D objects and not the smaller squares.