Let's Resonate! How to Elicit Improvisation and Letting Go in Interactive Digital Art

TL;DR

This paper explores how interactive digital art, especially VR installations, can foster improvisation and letting go by engaging spectators through movement, resonance, and collective participation.

Contribution

It introduces a resonance-based model to analyze engagement in participatory digital art, emphasizing improvisation, embodiment, and collective interaction.

Findings

Engagement through movement enhances improvisation.

Resonance fosters a sense of presence and letting go.

Collective resonance encourages community and motor contagion.

Abstract

Participatory art allows for the spectator to be a participant or a viewer able to engage actively with interactive art. Real-time technologies offer new ways to create participative artworks. We hereby investigate how to engage participation through movement in interactive digital art, and what this engagement can awaken, focusing on the ways to elicit improvisation and letting go. We analyze two Virtual Reality installations, ''InterACTE'' and ''Eve, dance is an unplaceable place,'' involving body movement, dance, creativity and the presence of an observing audience. We evaluate the premises, the setup, and the feedback of the spectators in the two installations. We propose a model following three different perspectives of resonance: 1. Inter Resonance between Spectator and Artwork, which involves curiosity, imitation, playfulness and improvisation. 2. Inner Resonance of Spectator him/herself, where embodiment and creativity contribute to the sense of being present and letting go. 3. Collective Resonance between Spectator/Artwork and Audience, which is stimulated by curiosity, and triggers motor contagion, engagement and gathering. The two analyzed examples seek to awaken open-minded communicative possibilities through the use of interactive digital artworks. Moreover, the need to recognize and develop the idea of resonance becomes increasingly important in this time of urgency to communicate, understand and support collectivity.