Art

 

Act/React
Interactive Installation Art
DVD by ASPECT
George Fifield, Curator
With Essays by Judith S. Donath and George Fifield
Introduction by Joseph D. Ketner II

Powered by museum visitors, motion-driven installation art yields talking tables, virtual snowstorms, and glowing pools of organic patterns

Playful, intuitive, a first of its kind—Act/React: Interactive Installation Art makes its world premiere at the Milwaukee Art Museum from October 4, 2008, through January 11, 2009. Showcasing a growing body of contemporary art that is visitor-dependent—without the use of specific interfaces like keyboards or touchscreens—this exhibition of motion-driven installation art empowers visitors to exercise their creativity and act on their curiosity.  Act/React features the work of six pioneers of responsive art (including an Academy Award winning Jurassic Park special effects designer) in the Museum’s famous Calatrava-designed galleries.

The Act/React DVD/catalogue, coproduced by the Milwaukee Art Museum and ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, documents this first totally interactive art exhibition. The catalogue includes an introduction by Joseph D. Ketner II, coordinating curator, and illustrated essays by George Fifield on the history of interactive art and by Judith S. Donath on the social ramifications of interactivity.  

“If in the last century the crisis of representation was resolved by new ways of seeing, then in the twenty-first century the challenge is for artists to suggest new ways of experiencing. Through interactivity, contemporary artists mirror, distort, and confuse the audience’s experience not of representation but of reality itself. This is contemporary art about contemporary existence.”—George Fifield

George Fifield is founding director of Boston Cyberarts, Inc. and its renowned Cyberarts Festival. Judith S. Donath, formerly associate professor at the MIT Media Lab, is known internationally for pioneering research in social visualization, interface design, and computer-mediated interaction. Joseph D. Ketner II is former chief curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Distributed for the Milwaukee Art Museum in partnership with ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art

For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

The cover of Act/React is orange with an irregular rectangulare cut-out revealing a blue-toned photo of an installation underneath it.

March 2009
LC: 2008034449 N
84 pp. with DVD    5 1/2 x 7 1/2
40 color photos
ISBN 978-0-9815208-1-0 
Paper $34.00 t



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•  Visit the interactive exhibition Web site at www.mam.org/act/index.htm

• DVD includes commentary by the curator and artists, video documentation of the exhibited artwork, artist biographies, a catalogue with color illustrations, and bonus materials

 

 

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Updated January 29, 2009

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