Reflections of contemporary society in media art: The visitor as a leading actor in artworks. 
Prof. Dr. Penesta Dika
(UBT) University for Business and Technology in Prishtina (Kosovo)
penesta.dika@ubt-uni.net; penesta@gmx.net

Abstract: This paper will focus on research into an evolving field in interactive media art within the genre of portrait: the visitors' portrait. For this new field, we can apply established art-historical methods, visual perception theory from psychology, and insights from cultural history to decode the specific use of motifs through the histories of different cultures.
Paintings by the 19th-century German artist Caspar David Friedrich once ‘invited’ the visitor to be a part of his artwork through its ‘Rückenfigur’ - the depersonalised figures seen from behind, and in whose position the viewers are encouraged to place themselves. In interactive media art, visitors are similarly invited to become the main protagonists in a piece of art as soon as they stand in front of it. They can even help to create and manipulate their own self-representations. In such cases, visitors can influence the visual results only by walking or standing in front of an artwork. 

Introduction

Selfie – a contemporary form of portrait that is based on the use of social media. The selfie is closely linked, on one hand, to the portrait in a classical sense (a genre in which artists presents different characters, social positions, etc.), and on the other to self-portraits (a work of art that presents the artists themselves). Lev Manovich applied a qualitative approach to the images posted in one frequently used contemporary platform, Instagram, which he defined as a form of selfie he then labeled “instagramism” or the “media form that combines lens image capture and design techniques” with “particular content”. According to James Hall, the “selfie” is the “last word in 'tracker' self-portraiture”; he describes it as “a vehicle for pathological narcissism”. Social media, especially selfie culture, is also influencing the creation of media art. For instance, the appearance of the visitors’ portrait in interactive digital media can be closely linked to social media’s effect on art. As previously demonstrated in my book “Interactive Digital Art: Visual Motifs and their Meaning,” I’ve created categories to research how the human motif, in the form of portrait, appears in interactive media art. These categories include interactive video-portrait, interactive physical bust, author-visitor-portrait, visitors'-portrait, and interactive self-portrait. One of these categories, the visitors' portrait, is given particular focus in this paper. The opposite category, depersonalised portraits of visitors, which appears in interactive digital art, will also be expanded upon. 
Historically, the “visitor” or “user” as a motif has appeared in interactive artwork since the 1970s - in particular, since Myron Krueger began his pioneering work on the further development of interactive media art in such pieces as “Videoplace” (1972). In the first version of “Videoplace,” live films capturing the visitors/users were shown on a projection screen as they were recorded by a video camera. The projected images of the visitors, which were modified by processors, were displayed as two-dimensional coloured silhouettes. In Krueger’s 1976 version, details such as heads, legs, feet and fingers could also be differentiated. The visitors were involved in a surface that was previously configured and well-defined  by the artist. The visitors, in other words, were the principle protagonists in the artwork by fulfilling the original conception of the artist.  

Visitors' Portrait in Interactive Digital Art

The portrait of the visitors is present in different forms in interactive digital art. Here, instead of posing in front of an artist in order to be portrayed, the visitors are “posing” in front of, or standing within the artists' artwork, and as such are included as a motif in the art itself. Ana Peraica, while considering interactivity and participation as elements of contemporary media artwork, emphasizes the fact that the media arts “have pushed a completely new definition of the self via interactive surfaces, depersonalizing the author. In such artworks, the public is self-portrayed instead of the author, quite unlike the original mirroring of the Narcissus.” Different technologies were used for those artworks. In this way we have different visual results. Jones describes in her book about Self/Image among others that she wants to “interrogate the dynamic between the changing nature of technologies of representation and continually shifting conceptions of the self”. This can be a focal point also for researching the visitor's portrait, because also here the iconography depends on the used technology. 

Selfies through Flies. In the interactive digital installation of Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, “Portrait on the Fly” (2014/2015), Fig.1, virtual portraits of the visitors are created live within an exhibition space; flies appear as constructors of those portraits. The idea of making selfies everywhere can now be realised in a museum with the preliminary artistic definition of the virtual environment and of the portrait style. Portraits in this artwork shows reduced facial features through permanently changing lines created with realisticly-designed domestic flies. The movement of the visitors causes a corresponding movement of the flies, as more flies rebuild the new positions of the face. 
Taking into account the fact that social media (including selfies) takes a central role in the development of contemporary society, it is no wonder that making a photo of one’s face under conditions prepared by an artist may be desirable for visitors at a museum. Instead of forbidding selfies in a museum, as in the traditional exhibitions, printing selfies made in a museum may hold a certain lure for the visitors. This idea is linked to the different apps and tools created for contemporary mobile devices, which are used to make selfies. In the Fig.2 we see one of the most prominent media art historians, Oliver Grau, presented in the drawing printed by a plotter, which was used for “Portrait on the Fly”. 

Realistic Portraits in a self-created Virtual World. Another artwork by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, “Intro Act” (1995-97), Fig.3, can also be treated as a “Visitors-Portrait”, though different from “Portrait on the Fly.” Visitors' portraits are integrated in a virtual space and act as creators of their environment. The construction and destruction of the world is linked to visitors’ movements, and thus to the specific decisions made by the visitors. The visitors create and destroy their own surroundings. The visitors’ portrait is integrated here in a different visual form - namely, one that is unprocessed - as a realistic portrait. 
It is illuminating to compare this kind of artwork to an earlier piece by Sommerer and Mignonneau, in which plants are created by the visitors, and the visitors are included in their surroundings. By contrast, in “Portrait on the Fly,” as we have seen, the flies are “co-creators” of the visitors' portraits. It is a kind of a mini co-evolution of the human-insect relationship, in which the insects create the humans, and the humans, in turn, help the insects to “stay alive”. In this way, the artwork is a reflection of the real world, demonstrating by virtual means the reciprocal relationship between living beings.

Multi-dimensional Reality: consisting of the Visitors' Portrait from all Sides. In a further example that includes the visitors' portrait as a main theme, Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss' work “Rigid Waves” (Narcissus and Echo) from 1993 (Fig.4), the observer causes, with his or her gestures and movements, a distortion in his or her mirror-image. This distortion is caused either by delaying or speeding up time while the observer is being displayed, and while other parts of the displayed person remain frozen. The live display is manipulated so that realism is present neither in the image-display, nor in the time-display. The observer, as the portrayed, becomes a tool for manipulating reality, including the image of the observer itself. 

Another work by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss - “Liquid Views” (Narcissus and Echo) of 1993 (Fig.5) – also consists of visitors' portraits. A camera takes photos of the viewer/user and projects them in a wavy image on a surface, as if the viewer would be reflected on it. Touching the monitor causes the effect of water waves, while the image of the viewer is reflected on these. The display is reminiscent of the myth of Narcissus and Echo. This is in contrast to the “Rigid Waves,” in which a virtually designed world emerges and there is more present because of the difference between a haptic and an intuitive interface. Regarding the mirrored image, “Rigid Waves” goes further with the abstraction, while “Liquid Views” remains more true to the mirror image, in closer keeping with the Narcissus myth. 

Identity change: the observer becomes the observed. Also worth considering is the work "Touch me" (1995) by Alba D’Urbano (Fig.6), which includes the visitors’ portrait in another way. This artwork is an interactive digital video installation, where a monitor with a touch screen, a video camera, and a computer are mounted on a platform. The visitors can observe the video portrait of the artist which is shown on the monitor; visitors can change this image by touching the monitor. Through the interface, in the form of a touch screen, the visitor is involved in a transformation from a self-portrait of the author to a self-portrait of the visitor. The visitor touches the screen and unknowingly becomes the leading actor of the work. This artwork shares aesthetic elements with collage, and reflects as a main theme a form of identity change through the use of contemporary technologies. Here the observer becomes the observed. 

Visitors from everywhere “dreaming” on the same bed. The interactive installation “Telematic Dreaming” (1992) by Paul Sermon (Fig.7) is characterized by visitors from different places appearing to lie simultaneously on the same bed - one in a virtual space, and the other in real space. People from different countries communicate with each other by being “next” to each other. This idea has previously been expressed in the work "Satellite Arts Project" (1977) by the artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz. Additionally, Sermon used visual, digital effects to make people feel as if they were “dreaming together”. The loss of meaning attached to geographic distance by way of technology has been reflected as a theme. The disappearance of geographical boundaries, and the corresponding disappearance of borders between people, emerges as main motif. As a result, uncommon feelings may arise in the visitors as they lay on a bed with foreigners - a kind of hint at the power of technology in finding new relationships. 

Depersonalised Portraits in Interactive Digital Art 

The Position of the Visitors form Geometric Patterns. Within the interactive digital installation “Trace Pattern I” (1997) by Ursula Damm (Fig.8) can be found another form of the visitors’ presence: a camera records the visitors, and as their movements are calculated, geometric shapes are created which build a kind of net between two people. If the tracked subjects linger in the same place, then different variants of polygon-agglomerations are triggered. At the same time, accords are also triggered, which depend on the side-length of polygons. While these patterns are being displayed, the visitor, who is presented as a circle, can consider themselves inside this pattern. The facial features of the visitors are not presented, but their positions, the length of time in which they linger in a particular place, and the distance to the other visitors within this place are all active components in the installation. This presentation depersonalizes the visitors and their image. 

In another work by Ursula Damm, “Turnstile” (2016), Fig.9, a further theme can be found relating to visitors in public spaces. In this work, the input of pedestrians is used as a form of “energy” to create a “living” virtual architecture. The visitors to these places are utilized as data that creates specifically designed geometric patterns. The impact of the pedestrians to the process is being live visually analysed. Compared to the “Trace Pattern I”, here are added more parameters for analysis; the pedestrians, as well as the visualisation of them, is rendered more complex. Not only the behaviour of each person, but that of an entire group, is focused on. 

Depersonalised portraits in digital art. Another form of depersonalization is present in contemporary art, as seen in the digital picture processing "Self-portrait" 2 (2017) by Alessio Chierico (Fig.10). The artist pares down the information of a self-portrait until it is reduced to a basic digital level, namely the binary 0 and 1. This artwork presents a kind of translation of a self-portrait into the digital world. The identity of the artist cannot be recognized at the first viewing of the portrait, and he can not be recognized without retracing the development of his image. Because the identity of the artist has been coded, visitors standing in front of it can interpret the work as their own self-portrait. The artwork is thus suggestive of the relationship between analogue and digital means of depiction, and more specifically to the relation between virtual and actual identities.

Depersonalised portraits in historic art. As early as the 19th century, in the well known paintings of the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (see “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” from 1818), we see de-personalized rear-view figures, in which viewers were invited to participate in the artwork. The figures are presented in a natural setting of breathtaking beauty – a scene with which, even today, viewers can readily identify. 

Conclusion

In contrast to the self-portraits of artists, the visitors’ portrait is created in real-time, and often spontaneously, as the visitors approach certain artworks in an exhibition space. The visitors' portrait appears in an environment prepared visually and/or acoustically by the artists. As Annette Hünnekens has formulated it: “Nicht die perfekt geplante und reibungslos durchgeführte Interaktion ruft die Reflexion der künstlerischen Idee hervor, sondern das, was der Betrachter zur Vollendung der Idee hinzufügen muß.” Material or non-material interfaces are used for transforming data for manipulating the self-image and modifying it in a planned way. The end results are always different. 

The visitor has been present in pieces of art before in the form of mirror images, as well as other forms of art that involved the visitors participation, such as fluxus, happening, or even earlier forms: as Söke Dinkla has stated “Zuschauerbeteiligungen – teils durch räumliche Integration, teils durch provokatorische Ansprache – war schon in futuristischen Performances und Manifesten ein implizites ode explizites Mittel, um die Distanz zum Publikum zu reduzieren.” Yet being responsible for creating and changing the self-image of the visitors - including the image’s position and style, or by creating and changing a particular environment, or by exchanging visual identities between artist and visitor, and even by communicating with other people from long distances within the confines of an exhibition space - are all unique features that comprise the category of the visitors’ portrait in interactive digital art.