“Your number is 96 – please be patient”. Modes of Liveness and Presence Investigated Through the Lens of Interactive Artworks

Abstract

The notions of liveness and presence are essentially contested concepts, denoting human potentials/activities as well as system/media properties. Their ambivalence is due to the fact that they are used to emphasize similarities between technological and human interactions as well as to distinguish them from each other. This paper shows how interactive artworks reveal and reflect this contestedness. It starts from the ambivalent denotations of ‘liveness’ and ‘presence’ to compare their different modes enabled by social and technological systems. If media technologies have led to a discussion of liveness in the performing arts – calling into question a generally accepted concept, they have at the same time enabled a discussion of liveness within the visual arts, bringing into play a concept formerly considered irrelevant. In interactive art, the performance of the recipient meets the technological performance of the work – in absence of the artist. As will be argued, in addition to the actual human-computer interaction, other forms of liveness are at stake: a ‘symbolic liveness’ situated within the diegetic realm, and a ‘technological liveness’ based on algorithmic processes. The latter again should be distinguished from ‘technological presence’ as pure readiness for interaction. In addition to setting the theoretical framework, the different modes of liveness and presence will be demonstrated in the form of a live interaction with two exemplary works.