Bruce Nauman, Corridor

In the first chapter of Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art by Katja Kwastek, the author gives a plethora of artists that illustrate the various practices that are employed in interactive media art.

Kwastek uses one of these iterations (Live - Taped Video Corridor,) to illustrate artists manipulating self-perception and self-observation. The piece uses a video camera (mounted at the entrance of the corridor) which feeds into screens at the end of the corridor. The aspect I found particularly appealing is that as the audience approaches the screens, they actually get further from the camera. This causes their forms to get smaller visually on the screen. It creates an interesting phenomena where as they move down the corridor, they are "denied the possibility of approaching" themselves.

This, almost maniacal, control over the audience’s experience is a notion I find particularly interesting when it comes to interactive media. Nauman iterated on this idea several times using a variety of distortions. Each variation ultimately relies on this notion of controlling the spectator’s experience as they interact with the piece.

I would really enjoy recreating this experience, perhaps utilizing projectors and smaller cameras to disguise the mechanics of the piece. It may also be interesting to project the viewer’s form onto the walls. As they travel down the corridor, the form they approach would get smaller, but they would be unable to escape the forms projected onto the walls to their left and right.