0G_IN_maquinas&almas:Maquetación 1
26/6/08
16:25
Página 47
The Medium of Response Christiane Paul
Walso e are incredibly attuned to the idea that the sole purpose of our technology is to solve problems. It creates concepts and philosophy. We must more fully explore these aspects of our inventions, because the next generation of technology will speak to us, understand us, and perceive our behavior. It will enter every home and office and intercede between us and much of the information and experience we receive. The design of such intimate technology is an aesthetic issue as much as a engineering one. We must recognize this if we are to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made. Myron W. Krueger, Responsive Environments1
It was 1977 when Myron W. Krueger, one of the pioneers of computer-driven responsive environments pointed to the aesthetic concerns of human-machine interaction and made the assertion that “response is the medium.” More than 30 years later, the aesthetics of response and interaction in exchanges between humans and their “intimate technology”, which have been explored by many artworks for decades, still remain largely underrecognized in the art world at large. While art institutions have begun to pay attention to technology-based, responsive artworks, exhibitions such as Souls & Machines remain an exception within the more traditional art museum. Artists have been using digital technologies and their inherent characteristics as a medium for the creation of art at least since the 1960s, shaping the history of what is now referred to as “new media art”. Digital new media art has multiple histories and connects to other non-technological art forms throughout the 20th century that explored ideas of responsiveness to instructions, input, or the environment. Among these historical predecessors are the instruction-based art of Dada and Fluxus, which often used natural language (instead of algorithms and code) to construct a work; the conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s, which explored ideas of the art work as open system and the dematerialization of the art object; or Kinetic Art And Op Art, which employed motion, light, optics, and interaction for the creation of abstract moving images. The development of taxonomies for new media art has been a much-discussed topic and an elusive goal. Nevertheless there are certain characteristics of the digital medium that are commonly used to classify the art. Among these are its participatory, responsive, and performative features; its potential to be modular, variable, generative, and customizable; and its process-oriented character that potentially allows the art to be computed and constructed in real time. The interactive, respon-