INTRODUCTION
'Control as much as you would like, as long as we are entertained, as long as we like the image we are living.' Stacy J.Willis, talking about Las Vegas.
CCTV, Big Brother, 'girl cam' on Internet.... We have become a society of voyeurs, in an image-based world consumed by the surveillance of things.
We like to watch others in their intimate moments, private facts, secrets, and dirty laundry are revealed, as well as to be watched.
As a result, most of us are living as a performer. We act, we fake, and we appear.
We live in a hyppereal society where 'the original is forgotten and the copy is taken as the original.' Stacy J.Willis.
Our life is a theatre play.
And within this theatre play, voyeurs and exhibitionists never interact or communicate with the individual who is the focus of the message. They need only watch or be watched.
It is a solitary use of speech, and a masturbatory use of images, for purposes of self-realization mirrors.
However, since few years, a new activity seems to 'rule' our lives in a new way. New technologies combined with Art and Design have introduced us to INTERACTIVITY, not a new concept though, but which bears a new meaning.
Indeed, even if the term 'interaction' has been in the dictionary since a long time, designers are progressively extending its meaning and applying it within the relationships between the audience and the medium.
Nowadays interactivity tends to change our gaze from voyeurism & exhibitionism to reciprocity, and our voice, from monologue to dialogue.
FROM VOYEURISM TO INTERACTION: THE CHANGING VOICE AND GAZE OF THE MODERN SOCIETY
I did my researches around 3 main themes:
- Voyeurism & exhibitionism (the gaze)
- Storytelling (the voice)
- Interactive Art & Design (the relation between the viewer and the viewed)
At the end, through these researches, I would like to show how a new way of communication is progressively emerging in our society, which changes the relationship between the medium and the audience in a positive manner, from passive consumption to engagement and interactivity.
To do so, I decided to become the medium during a 3 hours performance, on the 9th of October, at the Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, where I invited passers-by to interact with me and become part of my piece of work.
At the same time, I designed a Web log that I am still keeping at the moment and that I am linking to all along this dissertation. In this blog, I am telling the readers a story that turns around this performance. As another form of interaction, they are invited to leave comments on it.
Finally, I designed a small booklet into a form of an interactive CD album that people can customize and which works as a piece of the whole project. This third piece aims at both teasing the reader and inciting him to have a further look at the blog and then the dissertation.
These 3 pieces work as the 3 parts of a puzzle or wedding cake, and with the dissertation, as a play in 3 acts: I tease you (with the album and a video of the performance included inside), I tell you (with the blog), and I explain you (with the dissertation).
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CCTV, Big Brother, 'girl cam' on Internet.... We have become a society of voyeurs, in an image-based world consumed by the surveillance of things.
We like to watch others in their intimate moments, private facts, secrets, and dirty laundry are revealed, as well as to be watched.
As a result, most of us are living as a performer. We act, we fake, and we appear.
We live in a hyppereal society where 'the original is forgotten and the copy is taken as the original.' Stacy J.Willis.
Our life is a theatre play.
And within this theatre play, voyeurs and exhibitionists never interact or communicate with the individual who is the focus of the message. They need only watch or be watched.
It is a solitary use of speech, and a masturbatory use of images, for purposes of self-realization mirrors.
However, since few years, a new activity seems to 'rule' our lives in a new way. New technologies combined with Art and Design have introduced us to INTERACTIVITY, not a new concept though, but which bears a new meaning.
Indeed, even if the term 'interaction' has been in the dictionary since a long time, designers are progressively extending its meaning and applying it within the relationships between the audience and the medium.
Nowadays interactivity tends to change our gaze from voyeurism & exhibitionism to reciprocity, and our voice, from monologue to dialogue.
FROM VOYEURISM TO INTERACTION: THE CHANGING VOICE AND GAZE OF THE MODERN SOCIETY
I did my researches around 3 main themes:
- Voyeurism & exhibitionism (the gaze)
- Storytelling (the voice)
- Interactive Art & Design (the relation between the viewer and the viewed)
At the end, through these researches, I would like to show how a new way of communication is progressively emerging in our society, which changes the relationship between the medium and the audience in a positive manner, from passive consumption to engagement and interactivity.
To do so, I decided to become the medium during a 3 hours performance, on the 9th of October, at the Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, where I invited passers-by to interact with me and become part of my piece of work.
At the same time, I designed a Web log that I am still keeping at the moment and that I am linking to all along this dissertation. In this blog, I am telling the readers a story that turns around this performance. As another form of interaction, they are invited to leave comments on it.
Finally, I designed a small booklet into a form of an interactive CD album that people can customize and which works as a piece of the whole project. This third piece aims at both teasing the reader and inciting him to have a further look at the blog and then the dissertation.
These 3 pieces work as the 3 parts of a puzzle or wedding cake, and with the dissertation, as a play in 3 acts: I tease you (with the album and a video of the performance included inside), I tell you (with the blog), and I explain you (with the dissertation).
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