Decoding Gaze in Immersive and Interactive Media Arts

image: Marnix de Nijs: Run Motherfucker Run, 2001–2004

King, Dorothée: Decoding Gaze in Immersive and Interactive Media Arts, in: Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Dorothée King (Hg.): Interface Cultures – Artistic Aspects on Interaction, Bielefeld 2008, 175-184.

Historically, one of the primary motivating factors in art production and technological development has been the desire for creating human–like machines and the exploration of new territories. Mythical figures like the Greek Prometheus, creator of humans made out of clay, or the Jewish legends of the animated Golem figures influenced later ideas of human–like machines from Wolfgang von Kempelen ́s chess–playing Turk (1760) to the humaoid robots like Actroid ReplieeQ1 (2004) by Hiroshi Ishiguro. Outlooks on new territories were introduced as Trompe–l ́œil landscapes in Roman villas , outer–space panoramas innatural science museums or immersive and interactive settings (for example Terra Vision, ART+COM, 19973). Though the realization and production of those visions changed with advances in technology, the messages remained fundamentally similar. Also recent interactive media art projects focus on exploration and replication of the human body.