The participatory art means the artwork that involves many participants. Claire Bishop (2012) briefly defines the general characteristics of participatory art is the artist is the collaborator and planner of the situation rather than the sole producer of an object, there will be some uninterrupted or long-term projects turn audiences from viewers into collaborators. Grant Kester (2004) does not focus on the ‘participation’. He divided it into ‘dialogical’ and ‘collaborative’ art.
Participatory art is an art form which emphasises audience involvement and interaction. The ‘Infinite Mirror Rooms’ created by Yayoi Kusama is a typical example which ‘using mirrors, she transformed the intense repetition of her earlier paintings and works on paper into a perceptual experience’ (). She turned the space that only existed in people’s imagination into reality through endless reflection. The audience had an unprecedented spiritual experience that evoked their most profound and vibrant memory. The artistic conception was completed in this kind of participatory experience.
With the development of the WEB 2.0, it is common to have the two-way communication online, and any interaction can be seen as generalized participation. The participation in the documentary can be defined as the interactive documentary that the audience change the modes of presentation and content by editing an existing movie or uploading a new one. It emphasises the ability of the audience to participate in the production process directly. For example, in the interactive documentary <18 Days in Egypt>, the viewer can upload videos they have taken with mobile phones or the other types of equipment to the website as a part of the whole project.
I believe there will be more new forms of participatory documentary, and the range of issues it can explore will be more extensive. The participatory documentary could use richer art resources to make the audience to participate the discussion easily and actively.
References:
Bishop, C 2012, Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Verso Books.
Kester, Grant H 2004, Conversation Pieces : Community and Communication in Modern Art, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room, viewed 19 April 2018 <https://hirshhorn.si.edu/kusama/infinity-rooms/>.
