Participatory Objects

Discussed through Simone Osthoff’s text, Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica: A Legacy of Interactivity for a Telematic Future.


Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica are both Brazilian artists who worked directly with the human body and viewer participation and are best known for their work from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Each artist has contributed to body art and interactive art movements in their own way. Lygia Clark’s work discussed in this text deals mostly with sensations of the body, but frequently with sight, or the loss of sight, in the form of goggles, masks and mirrors. Both Mask with Mirrors 1967, and Dialogue 1968, are Clark’s way of bringing awareness of the body directly to sight, or taking away control of sight from the wearer so other senses are heightened.

Mask with Mirrors 1967

Dialogue 1968

Oiticica’s work moved from an investigation of color, shape and space of three dimensional painting to active engagement of the senses in surroundings. Oiticica moved from making three dimensional paintings that activated space where the viewer had to physically move through them, to installations like Eden 1969, where the viewer was invited to interact (sometimes laying, sitting, or rolling around) in organic materials like soil or hay, heightening our awareness of smell and touch. This work makes more and more sense today, as sky scrapers are being built at record speed, and we lose more and more access to natural materials everyday.

Oiticica three dimensional painting

Eden 1969

Both of these artist’s work was important to the time because they were creating ephemeral moments that could not be captured and displayed in museum cases, which was unlike the work that was occurring at the time. However, I wonder after reading this piece, if this interactive body work has been going on since the 60’s, it seems like it has been done already. Maybe the future holds a resurgence of the object. Clark and Oiticica were framed as makine Brazilian work, just because it wouldn’t mold to western mainstream art of the time. That makes me want to reinvent the power of the object and somehow activate the object in a way that is totally different from what we see today.