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research

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I am currently doing a combined text+artwork PhD at The Australian National University. I am based at the Research School of Humanities, although the project is being conducted with the School of Art. My research interests range across interactivity+interactive art; emergent+artificial life art; communication+dialogism; narrativity+authorship; responsive environments+environmental responsibility.

adDoctorate Abstract:

aasdasdaasdsdsdsdasdasdaasdaInterrogatingaasdasdasdaInteractiveaasdasdasdaInterfaces:
aasdasdaaasdssddsdasdasdasasdaPerformance,aasdasdllaldPoliticsaasdasgasdaand Power
aasdasdaaasdasdsdsdsasasdasdasdain Electronic aasdasd InstallationaasdasdallllllllaArt

The interface between artist and audience in interactive electronic art may involve co-evolutionary relationships based around shared control, choice, influence and participation. Such a transformation from viewer/listener to interactor/participant entails corresponding shifts in authority and responsibility, ranging from passive audience to performative co-author. Such redistribution of power raises the question of how interactivity in dialogic electronic installation art affects artist-audience relations: given the potential of co-authorship in such artforms, what are the implications of interactivity for the authorial control of 'The Author'?

Authorship and authority denote an imbalance of power and control between artist-audience and producer-consumer. Such a gulf relegates responsibility and perpetuates divisions: between those that make art or make rules and those that consume art or follow rules. Dialogic interactive art brings about response and reciprocity between artist, artwork and audience, and so challenges authoritative authorship. In this nexus, relations are affected by how interactivity is balanced with narrativity and authorial responsibility. Relinquish no control and it negates audience interaction. Relinquish full control and the transfer of power transforms audience into author. In electronic art, a balance between extremes is only possible with particular properties unique to a neglected niche. The form-content they make conceivable may be found in the responsive environments of biomimetic and artificial-life art. Such dialogic+biometric artworks raise issues of authorship and responsibility within the hi-tek artificial environment of the artwork itself, and, via the biomimicry of such artforms, they also evoke these concerns in the wider, external context of the no-tek natural environment.

Alongside a written component, the project has involved collaboratively creating, producing and staging 'Emergence', an interactive installation that is touring Australia in 2007-8 (for more info on this, see 'Safety in Blunders'). The installation allows people to performatively probe power and politics as they play out in electronic installation art.