Towards a Sympoietic Relation with Materials in Interactive Artworks

In this paper we acknowledge the agency of non-human entities and argue against the binaries of subject/object, mind/body, nature/ culture, science/art towards a new materiality. This new vision of the nature of materiality changes the direction of passive matter into a more active one. Technology has given us the opportunity to characterize and analyze material systems not only by their properties, but also by their potentialities. This leads to a sympoietic relation boundary between human-matter-machine interactions. In the context of an interactive artwork, agency should not be considered as inherent for any of the actors. It is emergent, it is the result of the interactions between the elements and the entities located within a mixed reality environment, as much inside the installation—material, devices, objects, sensors, humans—as at its exterior—such as the cultural context and the artist, for example. This new materiality which is based on an “open material” concept is an emergent and co-constitutive process, continuously becoming in, with and through interactions.