As digital art has emerged along side technology artists are becoming more creative and I show examples of this.
Art and the digital Experience
In 1967, a collective was formed, originated by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. This group was named EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) and its mission was to promote collaboration between art and the ever accelerating world of technology. The result was a series of installations and performances incorporating innovative electronic systems, including electrical circuitry, video projection, wireless sound projection, and Doppler sonar. Although many of these works were not strictly "digital" due to the relative primitiveness of the technology involved, compared to what is available today, they laid the groundwork for a type of art, which embraced and explored, rather than rejected or ignored, technological progress.
Joseph Beuys was one of the first to use sound in performance art. A German born artist living in America in the 1950's, he became known as one of the artists of the Fluxus movement, a group of international artists who used this kind of medium, but it was mainly in New york city around the 60's and 70's.
With the Introduction of this new medium artists explored the way sound can be used, to separate what is classed as art in a traditional sense, ie, paint and canvas and challenges the social normality of placing the viewer in an alternative reality, messing with what the brain is actually seeing and if, and what socially and politically is correct, Joseph Beuys blurred the lines, and so did a lot of other artists around the same time, making society think, what a bent reality can be like, forcing the viewer to question what they see.
It was the Fluxus movement that first took art to the streets, George Brecht said himself, 'concert halls, theatres, and art galleries" were "mummifying.'(wikipedia George Brecht, 2.3, line 4).
We are creatures of curiosity, constantly seeking new Ideas, using technology to become more efficient and to save time, as we become more and more busy in our every day lives.
In using connectivity we are slowly becoming disconnected In our lives, yet in the art world, it is working to make us become more connected with ourselves, immersing us in to an emotion or a feeling that we had been disconnected from, using technology to enable us to re-connect with ourselves and immersing us in to a digitally enhanced reality.
As technology advances artists are continually finding ways to use digital technology in art, and the lines between what is art and performance is blurring with the introduction of Installation art, which encourages the audience to become a part of it. In some circumstances the art is not complete without the participation of its viewer, to be able to interpret the work and be involved in the space. For example when I watch television I am only present in the moment for a short time, while a film is on, it is a 2D experience that we can walk away from, it is merely there to entertain, it is a tool with which I can switch over as soon as our brain becomes dis-engaged, this cognitive immersion does not require any interactivity from the viewer, but we can still engage as our brain tells us it is not real we are able to disconnect.
Digital technology, as much as it tries to create an immersing inter-reality can only work with the participant if they are a willing subject, which is why technologies seek to become more sensory, using a narrative that we can relate to, interpreting sound and vision, with sensory elements such as stereo sound giving the illusion that we are in a greater space, such an example is virtual reality, we can only become a part of this inter-dimensional world if we can fully immerse ourselves in the modality of the world technology is trying to create.
We can also look at VR (virtual reality) as a blank space that has been created in a digital world in order for its main aim to be immersion, just as theatre does, subtracting the outside world so that the participant cannot be distracted with real world thinking whilst in the zone of the installation.
Its dictionary term 'deep mental involvement in something' or 'being put in to water or liquid completely', but we are going to look at being engaged in a mental sense to be immersed in an act or actions that needs complete involvement of the participant. The concept of immersion is generally defined as a viewer “forgetting” the real world outside of the virtual environment and by a sense of being in a make-believe world generated by computational hardware and software. Immersion has been explored in various disciplines (Literature, Game, Architecture, Aesthetics, etc.), but many Virtual Reality (VR) scientists and artists have actively examined the concept by focusing on creating new immersive environments that push the boundaries of new technology.
This usually involves all senses to be engaged in the act, sight, sound, and smell, and sometimes even touch. Artists rely on the participant being completely engaged in the installation, becoming a part of the piece itself for it to have the desired effect. This has been used for centuries in theatre and has also been used since the 1960's for installation art the concept being that 'the audience loses itself in the veracity of the drama creating an immersive experience ' (Packer and Jordan 2001), but we can also argue that installation art cannot immerse as it is not live and is not immediate in the sense that it is not natural and open to mistakes like in the theatre, liveliness usually plays a big part in the act of immersion as it has the capacity to draw the audience in and create another reality that is different to the viewers world, the immediacy of theatre has an ability to engross the viewer in to the mediate time as it is being viewed allowing the participant to relive the experience and playback different memories of the parts that had then engrossed.
Oliver Grau argues that Installation art does not immerse in the same way as theatre does as it is not immediate and requires a level of staging which may mean that the use of technology will enable the artist to re-mediate his work in order for the audience to view the piece on a loop, this may be true for early digital artists who used digital sound and video, also computer generated imagery, for example VR, technology grows more advanced and is enabling Artists to become more and more creative in its uses.
One such example is Bill Viola's Installation art. Bill uses large empty spaces to stage his installations, because of the size and the medium he uses it would not be cost effective for him to show this live every single time he wanted to show it, instead he video records his work and plays it back on a loop, reversing the video, in some instances his work involves water and lots of it, and actors who are part of the installation. Tristan's Ascension(2014).
Because of the size of the installation the viewer is surrounded by sound and visual on a grand scale
water is flooding down and the actor is visibly being raised up by the water, it has a sensory immersion due to the scale and the eye wanders up with the actor, his movements denoting where he is going you are transfixed until the very end. Bill Viola's work has a way of hyper immersion because of the use of water and how it has a calming feel to the flow of it, and the effect it has on the viewer is hypnotic. Sound also plays a large part as without this it would not have the full sensory effect, visually and auditory it is able to engulf us in the sensation of being immersed in water.
Conclusion
Installation art appeals to the viewer because it does not seek to take them out of their immediate space but still seeks to immerse emotionally, physically and sensory, art as a whole over the centuries has sought to make people question reality and takes your mind outside of normal thinking, Oliver Grau said himself that 'the definition of immersion as characterised by diminished distance and increased emotional involvement' and 'requiring the most exact adaptation of illusionary information to the physiological disposition of the human senses'(Grau, 2003). Artists internationally have worked to bring to us critical thinking of how we view art today and it is constantly changing, the lasting impression it has on the viewer, is what an artist strives for to dig deep in to our Psyche, to make us think more about alternative realities besides our own.
