There is room for more exploration.
When looking for alternative ways to develop the communicative power of art, perhaps it might be about the works becoming real experiences, perceived with all senses. This means creating absorbing spaces that enable one to enter new worlds – that can show ways to re-think reality. Sounds, light and projections to different materials create space just as human bodies create space. Heightened awareness and sensing color is interestingly dealt with in Olafur Eliasson´s and Ma Yansong´s Feelings are facts -installation. Here limited visibility call one to listen to and perceive with ones senses more holistically while orienteering in space, which in turn can be defined as something related to the dialogue between light, boundaries and feelings.

Challenge to media art is saying goodbye to physical user interfaces and focusing to using human body as an interface, using the bodily capabilities and taking the natural sensory system into account.
Where real and virtual environments are merged, also physical – the haptic and digital can interact. An immersive space that reacts directly with human body is an interesting idea in terms of sharing an experience and for the artist giving up of control over the outcome. I am currently exploring within my collaborative projects this kind of space – body installation possibilities related to the idea of sensual experiences. I for example want the garden space I use for creating my art works, become a real stage for contemplative processes and other ways of seeing also within a gallery space.

The technological extension of the imaginary is an interesting thing that among others Pippilotti Rist´s multimedia represents. By using music and large projections of video she transforms the museum spaces into something fantastic – and tactile. By doing so, she also frees the image from its common form. Experiencing her work can give feelings of rest and joy, but behind the beautiful first look, there is more serious dealing with human body, especially the female one. More difficult topics can be taken into observation, when the setting is sensitizing. The immersive environment is in line with the artists aim of creating a space to encounter self and nature, leading to realization of the oneness of all.

Artist, researcher Terike Haapoja looks at this relationship and tensions of co-existence of human and non-human from more critical perspective. Her work involves interdisciplinary cooperations combining art and science. Haapoja´s politically and existentially driven works question our automated ways of thinking of f.ex. the boundaries we make between species, and the inequalities that belong to those categorizations regarding “the other”. Her projects bring out something I find important: the need for empathy, self reflective thinking and how art can communicate this.

Recently in Paris, I got to experience Tino Sehgal´s carte blanche show in Palais de Tokyo, which was a selection of his works merged to one. He calls his art “constructed situations”, meaning his work focuses on social interactions of people. His work reminds me of the idea of social sculpting invented by Joseph Beuys. Sehgal creates these situational interactions by using the human voice – or human as instrument, movement such as jogging, dance and language. His pieces are choreographies brought to life by “interpreters” – and the person participating his show. Without active engagement, there is no way of really experiencing his piece, because meaningful interaction requires parties – in dialogue. This means stepping out of the comfort zone, from conforming with the social norms and roles as we´re used: coming in contact with one´s own fears and hopes.
Sehgal´s work is immaterial, the documentation remaining only in the memory of the participant. This kind of art work is shapeshifting and by nature – liquid.

It is impossible to express in words why walking through a labyrinthine Palais de Tokyo, talking with strangers, was such a powerful experience. The journey started with a question posed directly to me by a small kid, maybe 8-years old. She asked me What is progress?

And nothing less.

Sehgal´s work – the dialogues continue to echo in my mind and body, that weight of the presence… This must have been one of the most touching art-life-experiences in a while. And the echo, it has power, over actions.

See: 
Pippilotti Rist´s Pixel Forest show, New Museum, New York, until 15.1.2017
Terike Haapoja artist statement
Olafur Eliasson & Ma Yansong