Abstract

Keywords: Interactive art, digital art, spectator paradigm, gaze of the artwork, symbiotic interaction, biofeedback art, machine vision, surveillance art, viewer-sensing artworks.

The goal of this presentation is to discuss and analyse viewer-sensing artworks and the reversed situation in the exhibition space where artworks ‘look’ at the viewer. To answer these questions I firstly looked at the topics of machine vision, computer vision, biovision and the evolution of vision.
Dividing interactive artworks into four categories (distant, contact, chance-based and bio-based/symbiotic interaction) enabled me to illustrate developments in feedback systems which became evident in recent decades.

• Raivo Kelomees, PhD (art history), artist, critic and new media researcher. Presently working as senior researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia. He studied psychology, art history, and design at Tartu University and the Academy of Arts in Tallinn. He has published articles in the main Estonian cultural and art magazines and newspapers since 1985. His works include the book “Surrealism” (Kunst Publishers, 1993) and an article collection “Screen as a Membrane” (Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007), “Social Games in Art Space” (EAA, 2013). His Doctoral thesis was “Postmateriality in Art. Indeterministic Art Practices and Non-Material Art” (Dissertationes Academiae Artium Estoniae 3, 2009).

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