Figuration of the Possible: Complexity, Interactive Art, and Social Change.

Abstract

Radically redefining art from static product to idea entwining object, observer and time, Marcel Duchamp essentially prefigured a dynamical systems view of creativity. That was the 1910's; Poincaré was a primary influence. Since then, complex systems theory has immeasurably deepened our understanding of transformative emergent process in all the arts. This paper focuses on the interactive art installation as an instantiated experience of complexity. Specifically it is proposed that viewers, referred to as Participant-Viewers, embody creativity through cognitive-emotional and often physical trajectories within an installation's high dimensional phase space: from perceptual/conceptual disorientation (entropy), to adaptive micro-stabilizations (bifurca-tions), to self-organization of novel understandings or perspectives (emergence). Beyond individuals' interactions with/within a given artwork, these dynamic spaces of possibility are considered in terms of their potential for motivating a broadened ecology of self, society, and environment.