Interactivity

Abstract

One of the most compelling aspects of digital/code art is interactivity. Interactive art is not in itself a completely new concept—for example, we’ve all become quite accustomed to “please touch” type children’s museums. However, what is unique in code art is the fact that users can not only interact with a work of art, but in some cases they can actually redefine it, or even use the piece of art to create their own original works of art. Mark Napier’s piece net.flag (http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart/welcome.html) is an excellent example of this. Viewers use Napier’s web-based piece to design a flag of the entire Internet. Their creation remains the current flag of the Net until another viewer changes it. Each of the flags created also gets put into a permanent viewable database. Napier’s piece—and others like it—represents a radical break with the established view of a work of art as contemplative object/space. Instead, in the case of net.flag, the work of art almost disappears, becoming a dynamic tool that others can use to express themselves.