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Conformity, Process and Deviation: Digital Arts as 'Outsider' |
Chia-Ling Lee (Columbia University, New York City)
The role of digital interactivity in the creative process of early web-based art works
It appears that with the emergence of (new) media, and then, within this larger context, of web-based media, questions about the nature and possibilities of interactivity have become important concerns. The essential character of the World Wide Web is interactive as many media art theorists argue. You choose which website to visit; click on content which you want; leave a message on social networks to communicate with the rest of the world; search keywords in any online search engines and databases for information you need. These online interactions have allowed Interactive web-based art to make possible the presenting and experiencing of artworks without traditional limits to time and space.
While much has been said about the interactions that take place in the final work, interactive web-based artists have suggested that these concerns involve more than the viewer’s specific actions, but are part of the creative process as well. We still know very little about how interactive web-based artists conceive and work with this interactivity and understand this changing interactive possibility in their work. With this change in the possibilities of interaction due to changes in the media, how do artists conceive of interactivity in their creative process? Not only does this raise questions about how artists create and work with the projected interactivity of the viewer, but it also potentially changes their own interactions with their work in progress. When creating interactive works, how do artists describe their creative processes? If interactivity goes beyond the act of merely clicking and selecting, what other strategies are artists thinking of and working with? If classical visual art tends to focus on the interaction of the visual experience, what other relations, formal and informal elements are interactive web-based artists considering? What kinds of interactivity are they looking for?
The investigation goal of this study expects to better understand the role of interactivity in active and pioneering artists’ web-based art making processes from the artists’ direct voices. The purpose of the email interview in this research study is to investigate the first-hand information data from the artists about their creative processes. As such, this study organizes around a select group of specific artists whose experience can help us understand the shifting role of interactivity in interactive web-based art making.
Biography
Chia-Ling Lee is a Taiwanese-born artist and writer. She founded the freeform Center in 2005, which examines contemporary art practices. Her curatorial project Metro-Wonderland: Taiwanese Artists and Urban Morphology was included in City States, Liverpool Biennial 2012. Graduating from the MFA program at Pratt Institute in New York, she has exhibited her work internationally in New York, Berlin, Taipei, Taichung, and France, among others. She was awarded to participate in the Arctic Circle residency program (2013) and the Camac international residency program (2011), Marnay-sur-Seine, France. Chia-Ling Lee is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in the Art and Art Education program at Columbia University in New York City. Her main research interests lie in artistic practices and visual art research, and especially art, technology, interactivity. Chia-Ling Lee’s publications include “Techniques of the Observer” (an Interview with Jonathan Crary, Yishu Journal, Mar. 2008, vol.186: 156-159), “The Reality of Simultaneity, Looking at Music” (an essay and an interview with the MOMA Curator Barbara London, ArtCo Monthly, 2009 Feb. no.197: 112-115. “Meeting Contemporary Digital and Modern Machine, Ernie Gehr’s Moving Images” (ArtCo Monthly, Mar. 2008, no.186: 160-161), etc.