Today our vertiginous society might easily be attributed to our culture, the times we live in or ascribed to public rhetoric. None of these factors shift the whirling dizziness of a cultural diaspora occurring in artistic trends such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. These ‘thinking feeling’ platforms draw upon new technologies that are fascinating, and at the same time terrifying, while encouraging us to communicate with technology on a daily basis. Increased online use evidences the growth of the emotional binding between user and technology.
More and more, Emotive Media is devoted to implicit user interaction with the goal of creating targeted consumerism and refers to marketing affiliations which respond to human bio-feedback. A more poignant definition of Emotive Media as defined by fine art enthusiasts is an ‘artistic movement’ that can integrate with Smart City Design. Alongside mediums of light, ambient sound and interactivity this innovative initiative transforms the action of a live audience into positive engagement, shifts perceptual intelligence, enriches proficiency and strengthens critical thinking.
Smart City Design alone involves user-friendly information and communication technologies developed by major industries for a variety of use in public space. An approach to public engagement that is forward-looking, progressive and resource-efficient while providing a high quality of life. These principles when combined with fine art concepts have proven to create positive outcomes such as a reduction of crime, an increase in an individual’s feelings of euphoria and the creation of sites in which the public want to stay in, return to and gather around. Smart City Design also incorporates new concepts that go easy on the environment and will fortify the public art ecosystem.
Defining Emotive Media as a ‘medium of imagination’ is to present scenarios that introduce the intersect of multi-disciplinary concepts. A crossover collaboration between science and art where the objective is to frame an action based upon candid human contact and allow an experiential encounter. Capturing individual participation in this way accomplishes unique ‘place identity’ and earmarks a direct connect for a contemporary dialog.
The effects of these media ‘frames’ indicate that the cognition’s, emotions, and opinions of participants are not sufficiently impacted by learning of the technical input; this is due to content being processed as individual interpretation. Programmed actions of digital platforms complement this ‘framing’ by changing the artistic landscape in various ways. The ongoing cognitive journey of individual evolution signals successful receipt of content. Once stimulated, these intersections go well beyond the media’s artistic depictions to influence corresponding behavioral intentions.
A good example of artistic ‘Emotive Media’ in public art can be seen at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina. This unique 2019 platform created by Ben Mason transforms the Museum’s grand staircase entrance into an unparalleled immersive experience choreographed by the visiting public. A multi-sensory landscape making invisible space visible, audible, and tangible. The aim is to increase people’s understanding that they can and do shape their own place, perceptions and reality; one of the major messages of ‘Emotive Media’.
Placing activity sensors discreetly around a defined area makes for a dynamic relationship between the visitor’s action and shifting light forms together with other multi-sensory components such as ambient sound. Higher-level concepts of aesthetics, language, and emotional well-being resulting from the human-computer interaction and its affective response have the potential to convey core content to enhance visualization and awareness. Encountering ‘media’ as artifact or as ‘object’ for communication has a strong effect on the individual’s overall assessment of the message to begin a dialog on how to bring the human back ‘into the loop’ of cultural knowledge.
At the heart of any good investigation into the arts is an unrelenting curiosity which asks, is this exploration or exploitation? The arts enrich our communities and represent an important industry contributing to our quality of life. For example, Artist Scientist/ Scientist Artist Frederik De Wilde approaches the digital as an object of Point Cloud. His art practice ‘focuses on the interstice of art, science and technology exploring the invisible, inaudible and intangible’. Frederik is the original developer of the ‘Blacker than Black’ material in collaboration with Rice University and NASA. This blackest black has consumed the artistic community claiming they invented the material such as Vanta Black. Rather they copied and cloned it from Rice University and NASA’s work.
In conclusion, Emotive Media and art devised from technology is an artistic expression that enables an individual to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it real or an imagined place. It is rooted in the practice of immersion as a genre and develops experiential intelligence. This new form of the narrative encourages viewer participation, delves deeper into blurring lines between fiction and reality, artist and audience, and somewhat alarming, associates entertainment with fine art. The paradigm is aiming to transform social interaction through specific messages and increase perception from synthetic experiences that evoke involvement.
With any new medium, whether virtual, augmented or artificial comes new challenges and new opportunities. The critical intersect of Emotive Media is ‘the individual’ and their ability to discern the machine-driven vision from the artistic phenomenon. The question is whether the role of rapid technological transformation links an individual in a meaningful way to the new narrative. Pushing the limits of experiential-creative intelligence in positive ways will bond contemporaneity to cultural delineation; reality then becomes the final interpretation of an ideal society and the assessment of that reality in the real world inspires the ethos to act accordingly.