Art and technology: interactive works and the audience waiting for them

01A broader audience, a new demand

Interactive art reaches a public that does not necessarily frequent galleries. teamLab's immersive exhibitions in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hamburg and elsewhere attract millions of visitors, a significant proportion of whom discover contemporary art through this format. The Atelier des Lumieres in Paris, with its monumental projections, has demonstrated that an immersive and participatory format can generate attendance exceeding that of the capital's most visited museums. This phenomenon is not a passing trend: it reflects a profound transformation in the public's relationship with the work of art, from contemplative to participatory.

This audience is often younger, more connected and more sensitive to experience than to object. They share their experience on social media, generating considerable organic visibility for spaces offering this type of work. A gallery that integrates interactive works into its programme gains access to a reservoir of visitors that its painting or sculpture exhibitions do not reach, and it creates opportunities to convert this new public into collectors. This conversion is not automatic, but the simple fact of attracting a different audience into the gallery space opens commercial possibilities that conventional programming cannot achieve.

Pace Gallery, which represents teamLab, has measured the impact of this representation on its overall footfall. When it presented the Japanese collective's immersive works in its New York and London spaces, the gallery recorded an unprecedented influx of visitors, some of whom returned to discover the rest of the programme. Konig Galerie in Berlin, housed in the former St Agnes church, has integrated interactive and digital works into exhibitions that blend traditional and technological approaches, creating a venue whose identity rests on this hybridisation.

02Key artists and collectives

The interactive art landscape is structured around several figures and collectives whose work has achieved solid institutional recognition. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Mexican-Canadian artist, creates installations that use sensors, cameras and algorithms to transform the viewer's presence into plastic material. His works have been shown at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Guggenheim and the Venice Biennale. His work sits at the intersection of architecture, surveillance and poetry, and he has built a solid market among collectors and institutions worldwide.

Random International, a London-based collective, is known for Rain Room, an installation allowing visitors to walk through rain without getting wet. This work, presented at the Barbican Centre and then at MoMA, has toured worldwide and illustrates the capacity of interactive works to become major cultural events that transcend the art world. Olafur Eliasson, although his work extends beyond the strict framework of interactive art, uses light, water and mirrors to create environments that physically engage the viewer. His retrospective at Tate Modern in 2019 was one of the most visited exhibitions in the museum's history, confirming the capacity of participatory art to generate enthusiasm beyond the circle of informed enthusiasts.

Daniel Rozin creates mechanical mirrors composed of physical elements — pieces of wood, balls of wool, recycled refuse — that reproduce the viewer's reflection using sensors and motors. His works interrogate the relationship between body, image and material, and find their place in galleries and public spaces alike. Ryoji Ikeda, a Japanese artist whose audiovisual installations immerse viewers in data streams transformed into light and sound, represents another facet of interactive art, more abstract and radical, attracting an audience at the crossroads of contemporary art and digital culture. Refik Anadol, whose data sculptures transform institutional archives into moving visual forms, has attracted considerable attention with installations at MoMA and the Serpentine Gallery, demonstrating that interactive art can feature in the most prestigious programmes.

03Technical challenges for the gallery

Exhibiting interactive works imposes constraints that the dealer must anticipate rigorously. Power supply is the first consideration: an installation composed of hundreds of LEDs, projectors and processors consumes power that often exceeds the capacity of traditional spaces. Ventilation and air conditioning must be adapted to prevent electronic component overheating. Cabling must be both functional and invisible to preserve the aesthetic experience. Some works require total darkness, necessitating modifications (curtains, entrance vestibules) that alter the space configuration and limit cohabitation with other types of work.

Maintenance is a permanent challenge. A work that depends on software, sensors and motors will malfunction — it is inevitable. The dealer must plan a maintenance protocol that includes a technician available during opening hours, spare parts for the most fragile components, and permanent contact with the artist's studio for more complex interventions. Pace Gallery has developed a specialised internal technical team for installing and maintaining digital and interactive works, an investment that few mid-sized galleries can afford but that illustrates the level of commitment this category of works demands.

Technological obsolescence poses a fundamental question. A work that runs on a specific operating system, software or hardware component may become inoperable when that support is no longer available. The most forward-thinking artists design their works with open, documented architectures, but the dealer must inform potential collectors of this dimension and the solutions planned to ensure the work's longevity. The question of conserving digital and interactive works has mobilised museums and conservators for two decades without a universal solution being found.

04Selling an interactive work: convincing the collector

Selling an interactive work requires a different argument from that of a painting or sculpture. The collector must understand what they are acquiring: not only the physical object (if the work includes one) but also the software, licences, update protocols, spare parts and exhibition rights. The certificate of authenticity for an interactive work is a more complex document than for a canvas, as it must detail the hardware and software components, installation conditions and maintenance procedures.

The price of interactive works reflects the complexity of their production. An installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer or teamLab requires months of software development, custom component fabrication and technical testing. Limited editions allow these costs to be amortised across several copies while maintaining the scarcity that underpins market value. The dealer must be able to explain this cost structure to the collector, who may be surprised that a digital work reaches a price comparable to that of a painting of similar scale.

The dealer must also support the collector on the logistical dimension. Where should the work be installed? What space, power supply and ventilation are needed? Who handles installation and maintenance? These questions, which do not arise for a painting, are decisive for the interactive art collector. bitforms gallery in New York, a pioneer in digital and interactive art, has developed a technical support service for its collectors that serves as a model.

05Institutions as prescribers

Museums and art centres play a determining role in legitimising interactive art. The ZKM (Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien) in Karlsruhe, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo and MoMA in New York regularly programme exhibitions dedicated to interactive and digital works. These institutional exhibitions create the reference framework within which the market can develop, providing artists with validation that reassures collectors about the relevance of their investment.

The dealer working with interactive artists must invest in institutional relationships with particular intensity. Placing a work in a museum exhibition, securing a public commission, participating in a biennale dedicated to new media: these milestones are essential for building the reputation of an artist whose work escapes the traditional evaluation criteria of the market. Acquisitions by institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, the Whitney Museum or M+ in Hong Kong constitute particularly important validations for artists whose medium is still perceived as atypical by part of the art world.

06Integrating interactive works into a gallery programme

Integrating interactive works into the programme of a gallery that also shows painting, sculpture or photography is not self-evident. The dealer must think through this cohabitation curatorially, creating dialogues between mediums rather than juxtaposing incompatible propositions. The interactive work should not be presented as a technological curiosity but as an artistic proposition that dialogues with the formal and conceptual concerns of the rest of the programme.

Galerie Perrotin has achieved this integration by presenting artists whose work crosses mediums, moving from physical sculpture to digital installation without a break in meaning. Lisson Gallery, which represents artists such as Cory Arcangel and Haroon Mirza, places technological art within a programme that embraces sculpture, installation and video, emphasising continuities rather than ruptures. These examples show that a technological programme does not imply abandoning the existing programme but an enrichment that opens new curatorial and commercial perspectives.

For Artedusa partner galleries, presenting interactive works on the platform benefits from digital's capacity to convey the experiential dimension of these works through demonstration videos and visual documentation that allow the collector to understand what simple photography cannot transmit.