Impossible Participation

The chapter critiques the rise of participation in art since the 1990s – a development that sees artists and curators searching continually for new and increased levels of audience inclusion. While there has been much discussion about what might be gained by participating in an artwork, we ask what might be lost by this act. We also question the extent to which participation is a useful social or aesthetic strategy in circumstances where it remains bound by the institutional structures of the artworld. For this reason, our work is an attempt to transform the broader ‘apparatus of art’ and to create works in which the roles assigned to individuals and groups remain fluid and subject to continuous negotiation. As a means of an attempt at resisting absorption into the institutional structures of the artworld, we privilege a form of participation that remains immanent in the work, but that never crystallizes into a single or definable role. Kathryn Brown , art historian and editor of Interactive Contemporary Art, says, ‘It is, perhaps, a fitting end to the discussions of the present volume that the most interesting and valuable form of participation envisaged by Freee is one that must remain impossible.’

Exploring the Roles of Technology and Social Play in Art Museums

This co-written chapter was included in an edited book featuring invited authors from different countries and different areas of museum research and practice. The chapter uses a theory of play by Johan Huizinga (1938) to frame case studies of play-based interactive experiences in museums in various countries. The aim was to use theory to ground museum practice, in order to evaluate existing practical implementations as well as to inform the design of new ones. The book was nominated as one of the 10 best museum education books of 2011 by Museum Education Monitor, and the chapter led to a subsequent technology residency the author undertook in the Spike Island gallery, Bristol in 2012, funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council England. It also informed his subsequent postgraduate teaching, an example of which is a recent MA project, which deconstructs play from a computational perspective. Collaborations have continued with the co-author, which have resulted in a number of invited lectures. In this chapter the authors explore play as a structure for supporting visitor learning, drawing from international research in museums and interaction design. Four aspects of play first proposed by Huizinga are explored – the free-choice aspect of play, play as distinct from real life, play as an ordering structure, and the role of play in bridging communities. The chapter argues that play provides museums with ready-made structures and concepts, which can help planning for visitor learning. The research was equally divided between the co-authors, who developed the conceptual and theoretical aspects of the article by drawing on their own research alongside key examples of museum design and digital media.