ABSTRACT
The rapid development of the Internet since 1994 and the increasing number of artists working with digital communications technology has brought new attention to the role of interactivity in electronic media and in emerging digital culture. Interactivity in art, however, is not simply the result of the presence and accessibility of personal computers; rather, it must be regarded as part of contemporary art’s natural development toward immateriality, a phenomenon that is evidenced, for example, in the works of Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. Concerning itself with the circulation of ideas among artists working in vastly different cultures, this article explores visual and conceptual parallels between Clark’s and Oiticica’s sensorial creations from the 1960s and 1970s-masks, goggles, hoods, suits, gloves, capes, and immersive environments —and early virtual-reality experiments from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Ivan Sutherland’s head-mounted display and the Sayre Glove. Although not technologically based, Clark’s and Oiticica’s works are also related conceptually to those of artists pushing interactivity in art into new territories. Both in Brazil and elsewhere, Clark’s and Oiticica’s participatory creations continue to yield new meanings.1
