Act/ React

In George Fifield’s essay on interactive art, he points out a quote from none other than the praised, famous film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert once said according to the article that he considered, “video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video Games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.” Now I’m a fan of Roger Ebert and usually find his reviews quite persuasive and agreeable, yet this statement did not sit well with me, especially after visiting the Act/ React exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In his article Fifield goes on to explain that the counterargument to Ebert’s accusation is “the elevation of the passive viewer/reader to active/user in fact expands the auteur’s area.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. In terms of visual art that one would normally see at a museum, I found the works within the Act/ React exhibit far more engaging than the usual painting or sculpture. With that being said the artists to me most definitely displayed their authorial control even further by giving myself control within their creations.

In Brian Knep’s Healing #1 a glowing floor covered in biological patterns is set up in the center of a room at the Milwaukee Art Museum. When my two friends and I entered his piece we were stunned by the visual hypnosis the bright colors exhibited. Soon we walked across the floor as instructed and discovered the biological patterns disappearing and molding back as we walked on and away from them respectively. This left the impression that every person who has ever stepped on the floor had somewhat of an impact on its present appearance. The same concept was obviously apparent in the work Deep Walls by Scott Snibbe. In this piece, a grid of the silhouettes of the past 16 people to walk in front of it, is displayed with those people’s exact mannerisms running in loops. In the same sense this piece is also ever changing and contains the history of those before it, however in Deep Walls there is the limit based on the sixteen silhouettes. In other words whereas Knep’s piece will eternally have the affect of everyone whoever walked on it, Snibbe’s loses the seventeenth previous person to walk before it every time a new person does. To me this brings a certain mystique to Snibb’s piece in the sense that one realizes that those before them have been lost with time. With Knep’s work this not the case. Nothing has been lost in time, only created. Both pieces were extremely interesting and I can’t say I appreciated one above the other. What I will say however is that for the moment I was there Snibbe’s piece held my interest more in the sense that I knew I wouldn’t be part of it forever and the fact that for a brief moment in time after I left the work, others would see that. That is until the seventeenth person after me walks in front of it.