Abstract

Keywords:
Self-surveillance, self-perception, interactive art, digital art, social interaction, dialogical artwork, digital mirrors

The viewer is inside the work. The viewer is in front of the work. The viewer is reflected in the work. The viewer as an object of self-manipulation. In each of the projects discussed in this paper the viewer is either reflected in the work or is an object to be manipulated in it: the viewer is either visible directly as an image or becomes the object of the work’s transformation. Projects that utilize the viewer’s own image have become increasingly relevant as they offer a thread by which we can trace the history and development of the digital selfie in more recent artworks. Projects that deal with the self-surveillance and self-perception of the viewer can be seen to function at various degrees of complexity, from relatively unintrusive mirror-like environments to works that attack the integrity of the personality.

• Raivo Kelomees, PhD (art history), is an artist, art historian and new media researcher. He studied psychology, art history and design in Tartu University and the Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia. He is senior researcher at the Fine Arts Faculty at the Estonian Academy of Arts and professor at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences. Kelomees is author of Surrealism (Kunst Publishers, 1993) and article collections Screen as a Membrane (Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007) and Social Games in Art Space (EAA, 2013). His doctoral thesis is Postmateriality in Art. Indeterministic Art Practices and Non-Material Art (Dissertationes Academiae Artium Estoniae 3, 2009). Together with Chris Hales he edited the collection of articles Constructing Narrative in Interactive Documentaries (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). In collaboration with Varvara Guljajeva and Oliver Laas he edited the collection of articles The Meaning of Creativity in the Age of AI (EKA Press, 2022).