Authors:

 Tavares, Monica.

Title:

 Interactive Image Representation

Keywords:

 interactive image / representation / space-time / interaction / reception

Abstract:

 The sequence of interactions between a work of art/a viewer determines the process of reception of either an artistic manifestation or an aesthetic fact which (in this article) will be identified as the interactive image - that electronically created image over which a receptor acts, modifying the flow of happenings or events that are immanent to its structure. Such process brings out the representation of the image that inserts itself in a space-time constituted as a space or borderline of tension, involving the observer multisensorily and leading him to participate actively of the scene. A space-time made up by the action of a subject derives from such proceeding, and he is incorporated into that space-time.
The representation of the image develops when the potential of the actions in the poetical program proposed by the artist is accomplished. The possible meanings become concrete through perfomances requiring effort from the receptor. Such directive actions, particularized by each user's repertory, make viable the representation of the interactive image and the characterization of the deriving space-time go on.
Those interactions are precisely the mediations through which the space-time becomes evident. The mutual and consecutive actions between the observer and the technological system are the means through which the image shows up, bringing out the effects in it. Such effects lead to different meanings. The interactive image lets itself to be "seen" in such trajectory that is particular to each receptor and developed in synergy with the productive means. Such experience builds up a space-time where the observer can participate of the watched scene. That fact is warranted by specific programs and configurations assuring the possibility of continuation between the inside and the outside of the situation that is being experienced through the use of electronic interfaces.
To investigate the representation of the interactive image requires thinking about how to structure that space-time in which the constant dialectics between the action and reaction as between the act "to observe" and "to be observed" guarantees the flow of meanings.
Tavares, Monica. mbstavar@usp.br Universidade de São Paulo Universidade do Estado da Bahia is an architect, artist and professor at Universidade do Estado da Bahia (UNEB), teaching subjects in the area of Arts and Visual Communication. She also teaches in postgraduation courses of the interdisciplines of art and multimedia, and she gives lectures in congresses, symposiums and seminars. She has got a master degree in Multimedia at the Institute of Arts of Universidade de Campinas, and she has been studying to get a Ph. D. in Arts at the School of Communication and Arts of Universidade de São Paulo.
She writes articles for national journals, and she also wrote a book called "Processos criativos com os meios eletrônicos: poéticas digitais" ("Creative processes with electronic means: digital poetics"), together with Julio Plaza, who is a professor and multimedia artist. She develops creative and theoretical studies in the intersection of arts and the new technologies of communication . She has been awarded the "96 INTERCOM Prize for Studies of Communication" for her master degree thesis done at the Multimedia Department of IA-Unicamp.