Performing Beauty in Participatory Art and Culture

This book investigates the notion of beauty in participatory art, an interdisciplinary form that necessitates the audience's agential participation and that is often seen in interactive art and technology-driven media installations. After considering established theories of beauty, for example, Plato, Alison, Hume, Kant, Gadamer and Santayana through to McMahon and Sartwell, Heinrich argues that the experience of beauty in participatory art demands a revised notion of beauty; a conception that accounts for the performative and ludic turn within various art forms and which is, in a broader sense, a notion of beauty suited to a participatory and technology-saturated culture. Through case studies of participatory art, he provides an art-theoretical approach to the concept of performative beauty; an approach that is then applied to the wider context of media and design artefacts.

Falk Heinrich is an associate professor and head of studies (School of Communication, Art, and Technology) at Aalborg University, Denmark and has worked as an actor, theatre director, and installation artist.

1. Introduction 2. On the Ambiguity of the Notion of Beauty 3. Technology - Unity and Distinctions 4. To Do - On the Immediacy of Performative Beauty 5. To Act - On the Beauty of Interaction 6. To Perform - On Beauty as Realization 7. The Beauty of Acts 8. Beauty in a Participatory Culture