Today, documentation is becoming a major source of exposure and appreciation for artworks on the Internet, beyond the original purpose of preservation and academic archiving. This study analyzes 982 documentations of interactive digital art projects created between 1979 and 2017. Each documentation was represented as a point in a 17-dimensional vector space through binary encoding. The resulting visualization from the t-SNE algorithm shows that, compared to its phenomenological quality, most documentation of interactive art is a cinematic surrogate that follows film post-production techniques. In conclusion, this study calls for the development of documentary techniques that can provide the viewer with a quasi-authentic experience of the original work in interactive digital art.

The projective nature of light results in distorted shadows, the remnants of physical forms, no different from any human perception that is governed by subjectivity. This work seeks to widen the gap between the objective world and the perception of it by programmatically altering the association between an object and its shadow. The shadow can transform or be animated, demonstrating a range of personality and emotion. On the other hand, the visual and interaction gestalts of our installation are carefully designed to emulate physical shadows. By juxtaposing the poetic interpretation of the shadow and realistic visuals, we explore the evocation of strong personal connections with an object and its shadow.

From a dropped acknowledgment on a publication to the use of women to popularize specific scientific causes, a deeper exploration of women scientists’ role warrants discussion. Here, the author explores this representation of the woman scientist in visual art, framing the discussion from a multifaceted, cross-disciplinary perspective. Through the perspective of various artist’s reflections, the ArtLab exhibition acts as a launching board enabling continued dialogues surrounding the gender perspectives within the scientific community.

Patent-Bot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software program that learns language from the patent database to write original patents for submission to the United States Patent Office (USPTO). The program creates thousands of new patent summaries per second. Patent-Bot is itself a piece of intellectual property, which in turn exists to generate more intellectual property. Patent-Bot also invents new words in relation to its future concepts, which appear to test the current linguistic limits of innovation and communication. Patent-Bot was debuted as an interactive art installation in the Omnibus Filing exhibition at the Visual Arts Center, University of Texas at Austin. Omnibus Filing showcased artworks, inventions, prototypes and cross-disciplinary research projects undertaken by teams of scientists, artists and engineers. Patent-Bot has since exhibited at Piksel 17: A festival for Elektronisk Kunst og fri Teknologi, in Lydgalleriet, Bergen, Norway. The project is an ongoing collaboration between the authors spanning a variety of exhibition formats and modes of display.

Gigapixel imaging provides a new perspective from which to explore the world from micro to macro. In this work, we created an aesthetically oriented gigapixel image named Epistemic Ecology . It combines ocean creatures with handicrafts and visualized abstract theories, showing a different way to see our world at the visceral level, the behavioral level and the reflective level. It provides a different perspective to extend possibilities of interacting, understanding and using big data.

The Collider is a door that only opens to those who don’t believe in its existence. Anyone who wants to pass through it must make a 10-meter run toward the door, without deceleration, before it springs open rapidly at the last instant. A series of sensors along the runway detect the runner’s speed, which is instantly analyzed by a computer algorithm that finally decides whether to open the door or not. The Collider provocatively asks the question: Do we trust the technologies we build? How should we trust them? Audiences find their own answers in participation, with their own bodies.

66m Under is an interactive installation art exhibited in a public space of Beijing 751 Art Zone. A floating balloon sea continues to rise, reflecting the phenomenon of global warming. Visitors can interact with this installation artwork by showing their efforts to delay the rising of the sea in order to save a bird nest 66 meters high above the balloon sea. We created this artwork to encourage people to focus on environmental crisis and arouse public awareness of environmental protection.

Tangible Tetris is a mixed-reality interactive game allowing play with a physical transformable tetromino in a virtual playfield. The extension from game world to the physical brings plenty of new characteristics, strategies and fun to the classic game, as well as more possibilities in interactive art.

In the interactive installation Smiling Buddha , we aimed to “pass on” a smile from one observer to the next. Thus, we have designed a natural interactive process that keeps passing on smiles. The system captures the moment at which an observer smiles before kinetically recording the moment and saving the images. The system does not merely record an image from a single angle; instead, the device records the user’s smile from various angles during the interaction. The final smile features different angles of smiles from previous users together with the smile of the present user. After completing the interactive experience, the user’s data will be saved and transmitted to the “Smiling Database,” where the smiles of past users will then be reproduced in the display area. Through the vast quantity of smiles, we wish to achieve our core concept of “passing on a smile.”

A multidisciplinary team at Rice University transformed the Texas Medical Center (TMC) Library’s collection of rare anatomy atlases into a physical-digital, human-sized atlas-of-atlases. The Electronic Vesalius installation gives these old books new life, informed by contemporary media theory and the centuries of medical and aesthetic criticism provoked by these multimedia image-texts.

In 1973 cybernetic artist Nicolas Schöffer drove his SCAM through the streets of Paris, passing by the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, creating a curious urban spectacle and highlighting the confrontation between different concepts of urban monumentality that had been at stake in post-World War II European society. Part sculpture, part automobile, the SCAM utilized the cybernetic technique of feedback and Schöffer’s application of it in the aesthetic concept of perturbation, in which light, sound and movement effects were orchestrated to interrupt the increasingly rapid cycles of perceptual saturation that Schöffer associated with modern urban life. The following analysis considers Schöffer’s SCAM in relation to the development of the “space-time” concept in the arts and how the technology of cybernetics suggested a new kind of temporality that complicated the role of art and architecture in defining the urban realm. It also considers the appearance of the SCAM idea in Schöffer’s entry to the Plateau Beaubourg architectural competition and its significance as a counterpoint to the “new monumentality” of the completed Centre Pompidou.

A dance notation system is usually regarded as a representation tool rather than a creative tool. This paper uses the indeterminacy approach as a creativity method to assist body-based limb exercise and development. The movement notation system is constructed based on the effort action from Laban Movement Analysis. In-depth interviews provide a comprehensive insight into the choreographer’s perspective. The findings show that the notation system and body-based improvisation training are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, the use of a notation system gives dancers a better understanding of how movements interact with various stimuli, in relation to internal and external environments.

In this statement, we envision a futuristic direction of art creation that explores the uncharted possibilities of incorporating programmable inspirations into the creative process. We invited three artists to draw an object called Programmable Sphere , which dynamically changed its shape and texture in response to the artist’s movement. From this experiment, in which an artist and an external object are dynamically coupled, we discuss new possibilities of artistic expression when inspiration is not isolated from the creation process.

This paper proposes the term “media multiplicities” to describe contemporary media artworks that create multiples of “internet of things” devices. It discusses the properties that distinguish media multiplicities from other forms of media artwork, provides parameters for categorizing media multiplicities, and discusses aesthetic and creative factors in the production of media multiplicities.

What happens when a writing cannot perform its function of documentation and indication? In the installation performance Poem without Language , developed from the action score writing Chinese calligraphy on the surface of water , the multiple closed-circuit videos raise the question of “who” can occupy the position of the observer, challenging tunnel-vision perspectivism. Such an orchestra of gazes resonates with the spatial organization in Chinese ink landscape painting, which challenges the anthropocentric ordering of things; responds to Nam June Paik’s approach to media, which disrupts the habitual way of perceiving conditioned by the mass media; and resonates with the concept of Kongwu (空無, emptiness, nothingness) from Daoism and Buddhism.

This artist’s writing discusses Project Amoreiras , developed by the Poéticas Digitais Group. The proposal is an urban intervention involving art, technology and environment, configured as an interactive installation of mulberry trees on the Paulista Avenue (São Paulo, Brazil). The article highlights its poetic and technological elements as critical positioning on pollution in the metropolitan environment, the processes of autonomy and artificial learning, the emergent behavior of the trees, the application of John Conway’s neighborhood principles to the project as well as the positive reception of the proposal by the pedestrians during the exhibition.

Recent investigational studies have indicated that fronto-orbital, temporal and parietal lobes have a decisive role in artistic creation and personal identification of “beauty” in painting. Moreover, visual artistic work and preferences could be modified by central nervous system diseases or external stimuli such as transcranial magnetic stimulation. Both creation and preferences would depend on prior art education and sociocultural norms. However, the superior activity of the brain remains of paramount importance in production and evaluation of paintings regardless of the style, representational or abstract. Therefore, redefinition of art by neuroaesthetic principles will create a better communication between the public and the artists.

Motivated by the potential for cross-disciplinary outcomes, an artist was embedded in a science expedition to the sea ice around Antarctica, as part of an art-science collaboration with marine physicist Craig Stevens. The scientist and the artist together focused on ice crystal formation. Most elements of the art process had three phases—before, during and after the science process. The environment largely dominated the progress and evolution of ideas. The results were multimaterial and multiscale and provided a way to engage a wide range of audiences while also making nondidactic connections around global climate—and producing art.

This article describes a partnership between an artist and neuroscientist who share common interests. The authors discuss bridging the fine arts and neurosciences through the development of transdisciplinary courses and public engagement through an art and science exhibition. Their NeuroArt partnership promotes dialogue and creates community among students and faculty by sharing access, tools and probing questions common to both disciplines.

Designed as a “provocative artifact,” the multimedia piece Annie and the Shaman raises questions about how information is collected, archived and employed. The work connects two contexts with notable data histories: Nevada’s aboveground atomic testing and its Basin and Range region. To highlight an empirical engagement with location, audio and visual data from the famous 1953 Annie test was visually integrated into a relevant context on location, rather than composing visuals post hoc. The project proposes onsite data visualizations as a method to encourage researcher and public engagement, especially when original data and process information is included with the exhibit.