Interactive Art and the Phenomenology of Merleau Ponty

by silvia, 19.01.2006

At the base of Interactive Art there is a co-relational experience – a kind of interconnectivity- intersubjectivity which in its strong-experiential meaning signifies "mutual co-arising and engagement of interdependent subjects, or intersubjects"(1).

Interactive Art implies a strong emphasis on body, behaviour, negotiation of meanings, and the involvement of the public who, now transformed into "participants," play an active role in shaping their own field of experiences. Interactive Art focuses on corporal involvement of the public and this have social relevance and implications as it is not only limited to physical sphere but also to mental and relational faculties.

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908- 1961) never experienced Interactive Art or technology, but he provides a brilliant description for the perception “that outstrips modern perspectivism” developing a phenomenology of sense experience, an ethics of the body. Therefore in order to understand Interactive Art I think that it' s then important to consider Merleau Ponty's point of view because there is a strong actional sense of embodiment in his philosophy which is also interactive and thus already intersubjective.

Ponty suggests that all perceptual experience be it mental or physical is bodily and dependent on the body world interaction He describes the relationship between body and mind (2) that overcomes the separation of human from body and presents new possibility for relation and community among world’s beings. Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the "body-subject" as an alternative to the cartesian "cogito" (3). Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually “engaged'. The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory functions (4).

Silvia Marini

(1) Maurice Merleau- Ponty The Visibile and the Invisibile, Translated by Alfonso Lingis, Evaston ; Illinois Northwestern University Press, 1969, p.245.
(2) In his final work The visible and the invisible he provides a most detailed account of mind-body relation. According to Merleau-Ponty modern philosophy ignores the role of the body in providing possibility for perception and for knowledge. He uses the phrase “lived body” as the basis for thought and consciousness.
(3) In the Cartesian model subjectivity is awareness of oneself as a subject, as the I who is the subject of thought. This model of relational ego creates a divide between the self and other. The other is excluded from my private field of perception. Ponty finds that subjectivity is “bound up with that of the body and that of the world - the subjective aspect of being is inseparable from body and world.” In his later essay “the Child Relations with Others” he describes how self consciousness and selfreflection originate in presence and relation to others.
(4)Maurice Merleau- PontyPhenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), trans. Smith, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. (http://www.answers.com/topic/maurice-merleau-ponty)