From Participatory Art Forms to Interactive Culture: Towards a Critique of the Aesthetic Economy

Abstract

ð ð Abstract: Do participatory art forms and relational aesthetics constitute a background for growingly interactive culture of today? Do they express same ideals or are they different ideologies? Why is modern and contemporary culture so concerned with spectator, be it art lover, TV audiences, or internet users? Why, in spite of their different scopes, are media (art included) so interested in activation and mobilization of receiver? Mass media culture secretly dreamed of full presence and commitment of spectator, boldly proclaimed as partner by modern and contemporary art and finally given effective participatory tools by digital culture. Are we truly becoming a society of producers and creators? Or rather a different type of consumers? What is role of art in era of new culture economy, where creativity equals capital? The idea of has penetrated discourse of our time, as its everything and nothing and so we seem to hesitate about its true meaning and value. It is everywhere and seems, at same time, derisive. It is in fact a vague idea that theorists of culture, as well as specialists of technology, already try to avoid, with distrust. However, we may have not yet assessed sufficiently the utility of this useless concept 1 . Interactivity is a strong ideology of turn of century. It belongs to era of communication and new information technologies, not as novelty which awakes with them, but as imaginary that culminates and is achieved with them. Its roots are prior to present technological state and its scope is not same as technique's, sheltering visions that are even opposed to those of technology. However, as in all great ideologies, tensions and contradictions are concealed within it, producing a powerful vision of world where everything is combined to make certain intentions irresistible and unavoidable. The success of interactivity is first and foremost result of overall triumph of communication, i.e. of logic of relation and connectivity, together with dynamics of a technical rationality which mobilizes everything and requires performance from all. But it is also mirage of aesthetic reason, of tuning in of sensitivities, aggregating us into community, as well as promise of reawakening of a practical and vigilant reason, of empowerment of free and creative individual and of reinvention of consumer - a consumer who is now driven by a new libido, yearning to be a producer. Such is ideology of interactivity: panacea to all ills. Emerging from ruins of modern projectualism and from post-modern solvency,