Reiser - Interactivity, Public Art, and Architecture

Reiser begins the paper by bringing up the issue of 'space' in the context of public digital artworks. Since many of the pieces that he is describing involve virtual reality, there are two ideas of space going on in the piece; one is the physical space that the users and installation occupy, and the other is the virtual space that the installation affords. Reiser continues talking about the idea of 'distance' and how the prevalence of digital art works are causing the general public to have a shrinking idea of distance, since everything is becoming so interconnected. Reiser sees an issue with this because the idea of distance is very central to architecture.

Reiser then makes the claims that most of the recent work in the domain of public art installations has been derivative of the work that was done in the early 1960s by the group Experiments in Art and Technology. Their projects and installations range from the use of fm transmitters to infrared cameras, all based around the idea of large scale public art. Reiser notes that the execution of these pieces may have been slighty less polished than more current installations, but that was solely the blame of the technology.

After establishing some concerns about the general notion of public installations, Reiser begins to specify some projects of note. All projects that are generally large scale and in very public locations. He notes the arc de ceil, the Senster robot (which he claims to be the culmination of robotic installations), and the Monument against Fascism.

Reiser then moves onto haptic and tangible interfaces, which are his focus. He describes several projects which involve the users in a physical way rather than just being a passive displayed installation. "The Legible City" invites the user to get onto of a mounted bicycle and ride through a virtual city made up of letters, and "Bar Code Hotel" lets people control their virtual avatar by scanning the bar codes of objects in a physical room.

Reiser closes with note that there are several artists currently involved in projects in a new direction, or perhaps directions, as Reiser states, "there are as many types of public digital art as there are artists."