IMMERSIVE ART AND RELATIONAL AESTHETICS

Art is a game between all men of all ages.
(Marcel Duchamp)

It takes two to make an image.
(Jean-Luc Godard)

Art is Game, Let’s play Together
(Stefano Fake)

There is an interesting aspect regarding the involvement and relationship established between the artist and the public within an immersive work of art.
Recent developments in contemporary art have opened the discussion on the emergence of exhibition forms
that arise, from the designing stage, as a relationship between a work of art and the public.

Starting from the programmatic text Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud (Esthetique relationelle, 1998), artistic value is now conferred
to those art installations whose material form is no longer, or not only, a physical object or the creation of an aesthetic environment,
but the social relationship and the actions that exist between the work and the public.

Art is a state of encounter.
Relational aesthetics try to decode or understand what kind of relationship and reaction the work produces on the viewer.

Experiential exhibitions are the privileged place where instant collectivities are established,
differentiated according to the degree of spectator participation requested by the artist,
the nature of the works, the participation models proposed or represented.

The relationship is not the simple secondary effect of a formal composition,
but the principle of a trajectory that unfolds through signs, objects, shapes, gestures.

The form of the contemporary work extends beyond its material form:
it is a binding element, a principle of dynamic relationship.
A work of art is a point on a line.
The form of the work is given by the encounter, by the dynamic relationship between artist and visitor.

The form of the work, in our case the creation not only of an aesthetic environment
but also of an experiential path, is given by the dialogue that the artist seeks with the public:
the form takes on consistency only when it involves human relations.

The emergence of new multi-media and multi-modal techniques,
indicates a collective desire to create new spaces of conviviality,
new transactions with the cultural object.
The multimedia artist who creates immersive art experiences will therefore have to concentrate on the relationships that his work will create in the public.

Since the 1990s, a number of artists have made this artist-work-public relationship the specific object of their research. The examples brought by Bourriaud to support his theory are many and extremely different in their realizations:
Félix González-Torres, Maurizio Cattelan, Carsten Höller, Noritoshi Hirasawa, Daniel Buren, Rirkrit Tiravanija.
What unites them is the research in their works of interactivity, conviviality and relationship with the visitor.

All this in order for us to face the evidence that the “society of spectacle”,
initially theorized by Guy Debord (La Société du Spectacle, 1967),
has been achieved today like never before.

Contemporary society would seem to be characterized by an ever greater separation that conditions relational channels,
where human relations are no longer lived directly, but begin to be confused due to their spectacular representation.
The result, decades after Debord’s critical text,
has transported artistic practice to a rich territory of social experimentation of all kinds.
Today’s art elaborates models of possible universes and works of art
the aim is to establish action models within the existing reality.

In my artistic practice I must say that I found myself in Bourriaud’s phrase:

The artist lives in the circumstances that the present offers him, in order to transform the context of his life (his relationship with the sensitive or conceptual world)
into a lasting universe. He takes the world in movement. Modernity continues today in the practices of bricolage and recycling of cultural data,
in the invention of everyday life and in the planning of lived time, which are objects no less worthy of attention and study
with respect to the messianic utopias or the formal innovations that characterized yesterday.

Art has always been relational to different degrees, that is, a factor of social participation and a founder of dialogue, but never like today,
especially in immersive art experiences, the public is called to perceive, comment, act in various forms and ways within the same space-time.

Art is a state of encounter.
Relational aesthetics try to decode or understand what kind of relationship and reaction the work produces on the viewer.

Experiential exhibitions are the privileged place where instant collectivities are established,
differentiated according to the degree of spectator participation requested by the artist,
the nature of the works, the participation models proposed or represented.

The relationship is not the simple secondary effect of a formal composition,
but the principle of a trajectory that unfolds through signs, objects, shapes, gestures.

The form of the contemporary work extends beyond its material form:
it is a binding element, a principle of dynamic relationship.
A work of art is a point on a line.
The form of the work is given by the encounter, by the dynamic relationship between artist and visitor.

The form of the work, in our case the creation not only of an aesthetic environment
but also of an experiential path, is given by the dialogue that the artist seeks with the public:
the form takes on consistency only when it involves human relations.

The emergence of new multi-media and multi-modal techniques,
indicates a collective desire to create new spaces of conviviality,
new transactions with the cultural object.
The multimedia artist who creates immersive art experiences will therefore have to concentrate on the relationships that his work will create in the public.

Each work of art could be defined as a relational object,
the geometric place of a negotiation, with countless interlocutors and recipients.
(Nicolas Bourriaud)

The fundamental intuition of our age is to consider
life itself is an aesthetic form, reused, put into shape.
(Nicolas Bourriaud)

The set of ways of meeting and inventing relationships today represent aesthetic objects.
Another absolutely relevant aspect of immersive art experiences is their ability to arouse, through social media,
immediate feedback on the momentum of the relationship that took place.
The audience of immersive art experiences strives to enter the scene and occupy the stage space, giving testimony through a photo shared socially.

All photos shared on instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or any other digital social platform,
are a real documentation of the art experience.
These are the moments that take place in real time for an audience convened by the artist
through the form of immersive art exhibition.

In a certain sense, immersed art experiences could be defined as
works of art producing social participation.

ART IS MADE IN THE GALLERY.

Nicolas Bourriaud goes so far as to hypothesize that “it will soon be the entirety of the exhibition process to be occupied by the artist. “

The examples he reports
(work? work in progress? – This is the show and the show is many things – Traffic)
are exhibitions where the artists were invited to intervene throughout the exhibition path.

In this case the visitor played a predominant role,
as his interaction with the works helps to define the structure of the exhibition.
The artist does not always have a pre-established idea of what will happen:
art is created in the gallery.

A work of art always aims beyond its simple presence in space;
It opens up to dialogue, to discussion, to that form of negotiation that Duchamp defined
the “coefficient of art”, a temporal process that is played out here and now.
This relative transparency, an a priori form of artistic exchange,
seems unbearable to the bigot.

The Artworks of the nineties transforms the observer into a neighbor, into a direct interlocutor.

It is precisely this generation’s attitude to communication
which allows to redefine it with respect to the previous ones.
Relational art is born from the observation of the present
and a reflection on the destiny of artistic activity.

Already in the 1954 conference “The creative process”, Duchamp
emphasized the interactive nature of the work of art.
A new generation of artists uses interaction with the public as
starting point and conclusion of the creative process.
Current art takes on and takes up the legacy of the 20th century avant-gardes.

In the worlds that these artists build, technologies, objects and the environment itself
are an integral part of language, and one and the other are considered
vectors of relationship with the Other.

While traditional relational artists, who appeared on the scene in the nineties,
gave priority to time over space,
artists who create immersive multimedia experiences try to merge both
the variables, modeling the audiovisual dynamics in a path defined by a closed space.

Space, understood as an environment, and time, understood as a progressive audio-visual experience, are identity components of this immersive art form.
The long-lasting effects are the survival of the most intangible emotions,
exchange and sharing, the creation of new processes of materialization in art.

The artist negotiates open relationships with the viewer, not decided in advance.
The observer then oscillates between the status of passive consumer
and that of witness, associate, customer, envoy, co-producer, protagonist.

A work creates, within its method/system/ mode of production and then at the time of its exhibition, an instantaneous community/ collective of observer-participants.

This art experience has to do with the concept of theatricality, where simple eye perception is not exceeded, but the viewer brings his own body, his own history and his own behavior.
No longer just an abstract physical presence.

The encounter with the work generates a temporal experience.
Time for manipulation, understanding, decision making that goes beyond the simple
act of completing with ones eyes.
In an immersive art experience, the emancipation process of the relational dimension of existence takes place.
The relationships between the artist and his production move to the feed-back area, the convivial artistic projects multiply, holidays, collective and participatory, which explore multiple potentialities of relationships with each other.

The public is increasingly being taken into consideration. It is an integral part of the work itself.
The aura of art is no longer found in the retro-world represented by the work,
neither in the form itself, but before it, within the temporary collective form that it produces by exposing itself.

The aura of contemporary art is free association.

It could be objected that the artist plays on easy emotions, but what matters is what one does with this type of emotion;
towards what they are directed, how the artist organizes them among themselves, and with what intentions.

Living in the age of the screen,
it seems natural for an artist to deal with productive practices that involve
the creation of dynamic audio-visual exhibits.

However, technology is not interesting for the artist,
if not to the extent that he puts its effects into perspective,
instead of undergoing it as an ideological tool.

Art adopts the perceptual and behavioral habits of the era of portable media:
reverses the authority of technique, in order to make the ways of thinking, living and seeing creative. The possibilities of convivial technologies expand.
Media artists explore the processes of social participation and interaction by creating photogenic spaces, within which visitors frame points of view with their eyes,
angles of vision, segments of meaning.

These practices could be defined as “directors’ art”,
art that presents the exhibition space as a film without a camera.

In 1991 Joisten, Joseph and Parreno staged a collective exhibition in the Max Hetzler gallery in Cologne (How We Gonna Behave, 1991) in which a disposable camera was given to each visitor at the entrance, to document and act by documenting the exhibition.
Today it is no longer necessary to distribute reproductive technology, because it is already in the hands of every single visitor.
The public acts freely in the space choosing, observing, cataloging,
using space and time to create this relationship with the work.

According to Philippe Parreno, art forms a space in which objects,
images and exhibitions are moments, scenarios to be reinterpreted.

If the exhibition turns into a film or theater set,
the public itself become the actors.
Documentation of the participants’ actions through photos and videos shared on social media,
becomes part of the creative process, expanding the boundaries of the exhibition itself.
Cultural productions are subjected to a re-reading-relocation by visitors,
which certify the ubiquity of optical instruments and their current prevalence
on any other means of production and social sharing.
Immersive art allows multiple and simultaneous views on the work.

The artist must take this process into account but avoid making the technique the subject of the art:
the technology must be placed in its productive context,
to be used in function of the relationships and exchanges it generates between artist and visitor.
However, we must avoid transforming art into a high-tech decorative element.

Today artists are beginning to create spaces within which the exchange can take place.
Becoming “Semionauts”: inventing trajectories among the signs.

Abstract expressionism carried with it the idea of enveloping the observer.
Rothko and Pollock include in their work the need for a visual unification,
since it was supposed that the painting could incorporate, if not submerge,
the observer in a chromatic atmosphere.
With regard to this enveloping space, to the observer in an atmosphere or in a built environment,
Eric Troncy talks about the “all around” effect (all-encompassing),
as opposed to “all over” (everywhere) which applies to flat surfaces.

Meaning is the product of the interaction between artist and observer, not an authoritarian fact.
Artists look for interlocutors: the meaning of the work comes from the movement that connects the signs
issued by the artist, but also by the collaboration of individuals in the exhibition space.
Those who do not participate in the game are excluded.
Those who feel nothing may not try hard enough to accept the game.

Artistic practice is always in relationship with the other,
at the same time that a relationship with the world is established.
Reality is nothing but the transitory result of what we do together.
Art is a living matter, more than a category of thought.

The romantic opposition between the individual and society, which defined the role of an artist in the 19th century,
has become obsolete. Duchamp, Beuys and Warhol built their work
on a system of exchanges with social flows.
No certainty is irrevocable, the work in progress above all counts.

Art is an activity that consists in producing relationships with the world
through signs, shapes, gestures and objects.

Today’s artist appears as an operator of signs, who models the structures of production
in order to provide double signifiers. He is an entrepreneur / politician / director.
The lowest common denominator of all artists is that they are showing something.

At the same time they ask the viewers a question
(does this work authorize me to dialogue?
could I exist and how in the space it defines?)
leaving them the opportunity to complete the answer and accept the dialogue.

The viewer/actor is an integral part of the immersive work.