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A Dialogue with an Idiot?: Some Interactive Computer-based Art

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Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language and Culture

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Abstract

Once wrestled out of the grasp of the military, ‘new media’1 such as the Internet, VR, remote sensing and digital displays were soon in the inquisitive hands of artists. Since then, artists have been pragmatically exploring the aesthetic and subversive potential of interactive video, CD-ROMs, telematics and so on, whilst museum collections become ‘virtual’, and commerce strives to sell us more ‘hands-on fun’. Advertisers and critics alike have indulged in much hyperbole concerning the ‘democratic’ potential for interactive computer-based art to escape monologic closure, and to offer a literal ‘dialogue’ between the artwork and the audience.

Art is essentially a conversation with the viewer, who is always reinterpreting and constructing the work of art.

(Shaw 1995:73)

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Authors
  1. Beryl Graham
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

    Finn Bostad (Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics) (Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics)

  2. Russian in the Bakhtin Centre and Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Sheffield, UK

    Craig Brandist (Reader) (Reader)

  3. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Lars Sigfred Evensen (Professor of Applied Linguistics) (Professor of Applied Linguistics)

  4. Art Theory and Philosophy at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

    Hege Charlotte Faber (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

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© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Graham, B. (2004). A Dialogue with an Idiot?: Some Interactive Computer-based Art. In: Bostad, F., Brandist, C., Evensen, L.S., Faber, H.C. (eds) Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230005679_12

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