Digital Theory & Aesthetics – Week 04

Digital Theory & Aesthetics – Week 04
Robert Morris' Plywood Show. Green Gallery, New York, 1964

Just a brief post, this one. Something like a ‘statement of intention’. For this subject, we need to select a work that we consider fits with the topic we’ve been asked to research. For myself, this is interactivity. I spend a lot of my time looking at, thinking about and working on what most people consider to be interactive artwork today: pieces based on interaction with a computer (regardless of the interface).

Instead of selecting one of these, I have decided to look at an older work: one of my favourite minimalist installations, Robert Morris’ Plywood Show (1964) (above).

Morris was a dancer and performer, as well as being an artist, and so was very aware of the human body in space. Many of his works demand that the viewer moves through and around them, thus the viewer is a participant and the work does not exist without them.

I really appreciate this concept and think that many interactive works today rely too much on technological ‘tricks’ to engage a viewer. I hope to take on board the minimalists’ concept of interaction for my own work, regardless of where my research for this assignment takes me.

Now, I need to go through the required reading for this topic and see how my attitude toward Morris’ work changes…



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