Martin Pichlmair: The Process and the Artefact

Marcel Duchamp is famour for being the first artist to assign artistic value to mass-produced goods like urinals and water glasses, and for being a fore-runner of what would be later referred to as “interactive art” (Huhtamo 2004). The artistic act was assembling and re-framing artefacts. In his shadow, many art practices – particularly in the 1960s and 1970s – valued the process, documentation, and interactive practices over the work of art as object.

Who creates culture?
There is much aesthetic production happening beyond the narrow boundaries of art. While many artists remain at the forefront of media-based production, pop culture is today’s defining cultural practice. The penetration of everyday life by the internet and networked technologies has greatly changed how, and by whom, culture is created. In other words, in a networked world everyone demands his 15 minutes of fame (Jenkins 2002). While the changed media landscape promotes amateur culture it is far from sustaining it. Most hypes are still generated by highly trained experts. Still, the gap between production and consumption that was drawn deeper by inventions like the book or the art market is bridged by cellphone video clips, Linux and Arduino Microcontrollers.

Gadgets, gizmos and artefacts
Our world is full of gadgets, gizmos, and devices (Sterling, 2005), more and more of them networked. They sustain a social function additionally to their practical. In her introduction to Device Art (2006), Machiko Kusahara specifically highlights the experimental nature of devices. Needless to say, a lot of the art pieces of Toshio Iwai, Maywa Denki, and the other device artists are informed by popular culture. A device is placed into the hands of a user rather than a spectator. In the best tradition of interactive art, the empowered spectator is playing a significant role in the work of art. The artwork incorporates the spectator:

“Artists understood this very well, perfecting a series of devices that address spectators. if not as partners, then at least as intervening individuals in a process that would be meaningless without their intervention.” (Poissant 2007, p. 245)

An artefact is a culturally informed document that takes the form of an object. From a certain angle, all objects are artefacts. Artefacts store information over time. They cannot be viewed in isolation but must be read in context of each other. Artefact modding – the art of conserving the cultural vectors of past technology by assigning it a new value – is an established artistic form nowadays. My own piece “bagatelle concrète” is but one example of many. It is a discourse on a once popular object. It is not art, but culture, isn’t it?

HUHTAMO, E. (2004): Trouble at the Interface, or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art. Framework, The Finnish Art Review, 2/2004.
JENKINS, H. (2002): Interactive Audiences? The ‘collective intelligence’ of media fans. Available at: http://web.mit.educms/People/henry3/collective%20intelligence.html
KUSAHARA, M. (2006): Device Art: A New Form of Media Art from a Japanese Perspective. intelligent agent, 6/2. Available at: http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol6_No2_pacific_rim_kusahara.htm
POISSANT, L. (2007): The Passage from Material to Interface. In: GRAU, O. (Ed.): MediaArtHistories. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.
STERLING, B. (2005): Shaping Things. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.

Martin Pichlmair (Austria)
Martin Pichlmair is a media artist and researcher living and working in Vienna, Austria. Since he received his doctoral degree in informatics he works as assistant professor at the Institute of Design and Assessment of Technology at the Vienna University of Technology. His art pieces were shown at various international media art festivals and exhibitions. He is co-editor of the academic journal Eludamos – Journal for Computer Game Culture. Martin Pichlmair regularly reviews for and organises academic conferences and symposia. His research focus is on games, art, music, physical interfaces and the social role of software.