Transcript AUDIENCE IN VIVO: A STUDY OF INTERACTIONAL NATURE OF

Communication & Culture: Transitive Explorations
April 29-30, 2011, Yale University
AUDIENCE IN VIVO
A STUDY OF INTERACTIONAL NATURE OF ART
AND PROCESSES OF AUDIENCE MAKING
Nail Farkhatdinov
Higher School of Economics, Moscow
[email protected]
1
Audiences
• Two premises of predominant study of
art audiences
–Audiences are aggregations of people
attending a particular art show
(gender, age, class etc);
–Perception of art is a consumption
process.
2
Bourdieu and Art Perception
Art perception is a socio-semiotic process;
To perceive means to decode;
Decoding abilities are socially produced and
therefore unequally distributed in a particular
society;
Education and other institutions play
significant role in the distribution of this
particular form of cultural capital.
3
The Problem
• Audiences are not pre-given and formed
primarily by external social, economic and
political factors;
• (Contemporary) Art is not passively perceived.
• Audiences are continuously enacted via
communication and interaction during an
exhibition visit
4
Ethnography of Art Perception
in Moscow
The National Center
for Contemporary
Arts
Building
Exhibitions
Former lamp factory
Visual Scores, To See
the Sound
Winzavod Art Center,
Former winery
Art Space Start
Center for
Contemporary
Culture Garage
Former garage
PharmaConcert
(remake, originally
shown in Samara,
Russia)
Decode: Digital
Design Sensations
(abridged version of
V&A Museum show
in London)
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PharmaConcert Art Show: Setting-1
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PharmaConcert Art Show: Setting-2
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PharmaConcert Art Show: Setting-3
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Taking a capsule and communication
• The role of communication (with other visitors or
with a warden) in the experience of art;
• It indicates the failure to follow the script and to
experience art;
• With taking a capsule the script starts.
Communication is needed in order to facilitate
experience of art objects if they are ambiguous.
Vice versa: ambiguity of art objects causes
communication as a key component of audience
making process.
9
Decode Art Show: Setting
10
Observing Others Perceiving Art
• Visitors prefer to observe other visitors who are
perceiving art;
• Videogrid (by Ross Phillips) and Venetian Mirror
(by FABRICA Group) provided an opportunity to
observe and be observed at the same time;
• This explains high interest and emotional
response from the visitors.
Audience as a collective acting in a similar way
from observers’ perspective
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Concluding Remarks
• Audience (in vivo) as a communication rather
than a stable aggregation of people;
• Various regimes of interactivity (going beyond
passive/active perception)
• The meaning of art: enchanting technology
which brings forth forms of communication
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