Event and Meaning: Reading Interactive Installations in the Light of Art History

Roberto Simanowski demonstrates in a close reading of two interactive in- stallations that they do not simply create an event as “a period of time to be lived through” (Bourriaud 15). Looking at Still Standing by Bruno Nadeau and Jason Lewis and Zachary Booth Simpson’s Mondrian, Simanowski maintains that these pieces do not only offer two different concepts of the interactors’ actions and hence body experiences; they also engage in a very difficult way with the issues of inter- and transmediality and thereby refer to the history of the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century.

(Source: Beyond the Screen, introduction by Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla)