Varvara Guljajeva’s artistic research based doctoral thesis “From interaction to post-participation: the disappearing role of the active participant” analyzes and contextualizes passive interaction with the audience from the point of view of participation and looks at how active participation has been replaced by passive in interactive art. The doctoral thesis deals with the history and identity discourse of interactive art, examining how works of art that do not involve the audience, but involve an internal system interaction with a data source, are talked about. In other words, the research is about the shift of interest from human-machine interaction to system-to-system interaction and the reasons behind it. In this doctoral thesis, a distinction is made between direct and indirect succession of participation. The selected works of art have thus been studied from the point of view of concept, direct or indirect participation, and execution. In addition, the related works of other artists have been introduced and analyzed under each subcategory of participation sequence.
Finally, the doctoral thesis contributes to the development of interactive art by analyzing and contextualizing the passive participation with the audience that manifests itself as a participative sequence. The author argues that the notion of participatory succession helps to address the shift from active to passive viewership in the complex era of data surveillance, when people are constantly monitored, tracked, and observed without asking their consent.
Supervisors: Dr. Raivo Kelomees (Estonian Academy of Arts), Dr. Pau Waelder (Open University of Catalonia);
External Reviewers: Prof. Dr. Christa Sommerer (Interface Cultures, The University of Art and Design Linz), Prof. Dr. Moises Mañas Carbonell (Faculty of Fine Arts, Polytechnic University of Valencia);
Opponent: Prof. Dr. Christa Sommerer (Interface Cultures, The University of Art and Design Linz).
Language editor / Copy editor: Dan O’Connel, Martin Rünk
Translation into Estonian: Martin Rünk
Design & layout: Varvara & Mar OÜ (Jesús Rodríguez Santos)
Dissertations Academiae Artium Estoniae 26
200 pages, in English, with a summary in Estonian
Estonian Academy of Arts, 2018
ISBN 978-9949-594-70-2 (print)
ISBN 978-9949-594-71-9 (pdf)
ISSN 1736-2261