Interactive art and the making of an experience: Spiritual De-Krypt at Museo Cantonale d’Arte

On Saturday I have been to an interactive art exhibition, INnet HUB 11.0, at Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano, part of the INnet Project with media artists in focus Maurice Benayoun and the couple Vasulka. The Vasulkas are legends of media art, they have been active with video installations since the seventies. As for Maurice Benayoun, he has a history of himself with media and virtual reality installations, if you check his website, you might wanna read about his virtual reality installation Is God flat? (“first metaphysical videogame”, Le Monde 1994)

However, the exhibition was developed with little care of masking technology into a true experience. Altogether, technology was just as obvious as the interactive experience itself and left little space for the visitor to be immersed. The So.So.So. installation of Maurice Benayoun is based on a powerful concept – visitor controls the perspective of what is being viewed and dives into the image projected with the help of VR binoculars, getting closer and closer to a detail of interest, while images keep changing in the very moment he focuses on a specific detail. Less powerful was its staging, the environment was cold like a scientific lab, no climax apart from the Aha of figuring it out. Another installation with a motion-capture system triggered attention, but the experience stopped there, at seeing my projection on the screen and at the fact that there was indeed a mathematical precision to the way my movements corresponded to the sounds generated. I see a huge potential for the association between movement and sounds, and for systems that can provide a synchronous reproduction of units corresponding to different senses. Provided the environment is created for an experience to take place.

The last room had something special: a black curtain that you could just leave to fall behind you and enter a self-sufficient environment. Not here to make the definition of an environment for an experience, but this is all about it: create a world in itself, cut off from the world outside, establish different rules of interaction, exploit senses to the maximum and allow them to come together different than out here, challenge and defy perception, empower people to rediscover themselves and their actions. The installation in that last room was called SPIRITUAL DE-KRYPT, developed by Roberto Vitalini and Dante Tanzi. The room was very dark. When I moved towards a very subtle red light, my body was suddenly projected on two screens, in lightened colours, the music got stronger. If I stopped the projected "aura" slowly faded away, the music got softer. The light projection became visible again, naturally following my movements, triggering melodic sequences. The surrounding sound was leading my gestures into a circular rhythm that, if repeated, amplified the melody generated by my movements and the visual traces of my actions.

Drawing data out of my own experience and into the analytical level, there are some elements that I consider essential for changing a sum of media into an authentic experience: first, closing the environment from the gallery, the world, the people outside. This was the feeling I experienced when the curtain fell behind and the light grew dimmer. Second element can be drawn from dramaturgy rules of dosing silence and sound, the element of surprise. The visitor does not understand immediately that it is him who generates sound and the amplification of sound (even though he might read the informative panel at the entrance, the text is cryptic and incites curiosity rather than explaining). The same applies for projections: he realizes he is projected, but not immediately that only movement generates light, whereas stillness makes him invisible to the screen. Third element: the visitor is in control, he creates the world around him. Fourth element: powerful game with perception: you move, you project, you generate sound. Your movement is projected as light on the screens, as if movement itself is decomposing and enlightening your body. In fact, you don’t see your body anymore, you just see light projected. Fifth element: Continuity of the experience. Movements generate sounds, melodic sequences. Your movement then produces music that can inspire your subsequent movements and so on. Dancing in this room is a circle in which movement generates its projection and its musical counterpart that propels the dance and its projection again and its music again.

Many thanks to Roberto, who explained me how the system works and what the motivation behind creating this experience was.