Digital Relationality: Relational aesthetics in contemporary interactive art

In 1998, Bourriaud proposed relational aesthetics as an art form that took interhuman relations as its content to confront the progressive commoditization of those relations and propose alternative ways of living. Twenty years later, relational aesthetics has become even more relevant as a tool to reveal the relationality between technology and each other, as our everyday social relations have been commoditized in ways previously unimaginable. Given the enormous shifts that have occurred since its inception, relational aesthetics needs revitalization. In this paper, we aim to renew relational aesthetics as ‘digital relationality,’ recognizing important critiques about a lack of antagonism from Claire Bishop and identifying ways in which incorporating relational aesthetics with interactive art may resolve many of these criticisms. We analyse four of our own artworks as examples of how merging relational aesthetics with interactive digital art can benefit both realms. We propose that applying relational aesthetics to digital media reveals the antagonism within the structures imposed by technology ordinarily taken for granted. Drawing attention to these structures, and subverting the typical uses of these platforms, allows for reflection and discourse. This can lead both artist and viewer to imagine alternative ways of living beyond the constraints we ordinarily operate within, becoming active participants in constructing a digitally relational future.