and space can be the avenue for dialogue, with the body of the audience being the essential component. Marcel Biefer and Beat Zgraggen's God (1 998) creates an ironic place of worship where the spectators are provided with a changing room to take off their clothes before confronting an abstract light sculpture: ‘God.’ Of course the shared nudity of the audience is the inferred ‘real’ contact with the ineffable. Chinese artist Cai Guo-Quaing's, Cultural Melting Bath (1 997; 1 998) is a rock garden with thirty tons of rocks from China, arranged around an herbal bath according to feng shui principles to bestow good qi energy on the gallery and visitors. Visitors are invited to bathe communally, and the shared human intimacy is perhaps the crux of this beneficial energy. Works such as those outlined above are addressed directly towards the body and seek to highlight its status as ‘a walking sensorium’ [33, p.363]. Interactive art can potentially combine sensory experiences with opportunities for action, fun and descision making. David Rokeby is a recognised talent in the area. His Very Nervous System (1 986) tracks the movements of a person through video tracking in an open space, and these actions trigger synthesised sounds. Though invisible, the system transforms a normal outdoor site into a nuanced musical instrument. He sees these interactive systems as microcosms in which viewers/participants can become
aware of the reaction to their actions and possibly therefore the consequences of their behaviour. Much as a sensitive animal like a horse might react in amplified ways to one's presence, these works acknowledge company, and allow us to practice for the real world. Rokeby elaborates: ‘By providing us with mirrors, artificial media, points of view, and automata, interactive artworks offer us the tools for constructing identities – our sense of ourselves in relation to the artwork and, by implication, in relation to the world’ [23, p.1 53]. German media artist Monika Fleischmann also sees such works as providing a symbolic exercise: What is important is to push back the boundaries of perception and, whenever possible, to climb over these. The Greeks invented theatre to externalize the drama of life lived at the symbolic level. [\] Interactive theatrical illusion spaces are used for trying out new scenarios. Reality is treated ‘as if.’ In the virtual space, we practice for reality and live with a feeling of ‘as if.’ As if we are dreaming, as if we are flying, as if we are dying, falling, sliding, going into orbit, as if we are existing. (qtd. [32, pp.734-735]) Technology-enabled interactive art not only offers choice and fosters participation but also presents opportunities for more heuristic computer/human interfaces. Crucially it seeks to engage the entire repertoire of human movement.