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"Practicable art : from medium to instrument"

by Samuel Bianchini, Masaki Fujihata and Dominique Cunin

Since the 1950s, many artists have produced artworks that achieve themselves with the physical intervention of their audience. Whether they use technology or not, those are the works that we define as "practicables" in the book of the very same title, which has just been published by MIT Press under the co-direction of Samuel Bianchini, with the contributions of Masaki Fujihata and Dominique Cunin. Many works by Masaki Fujihata give a great importance to the public that will experience them as much as their medium, as he reminds us with the words "for each new work, a whole new medium" at the beginning of his first monographic publishing, an augmented book he has just published in the anarchive collection. The approaches of Samuel Bianchini and Masaki Fujihata settle the foundation of an aesthetic experience that also puts to the test, by the public, the conditions of the works. From then on, works may also be considered under the register of their instrumental condition. Can artists thus be regarded as instrument makers? It is on this path that Dominique Cunin ventures through the development of Mobilizing.js, a development environment for artists and designers and, beyond, for their audiences.

Books References :
• Samuel Bianchini and Erik Verhagen (Eds), /Practicable. From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art/, Cambridge / London, MIT Press, 2016.
• Anne-Marie Duguet and Masaki Fujihata (Eds), /Masaki Fujihata/, anarchive #6, Paris, 2016.