ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the shifts in the spectator's position in relation to art. To clarify this shift in meaning-making, it outlines three distinct headings: religious icons, autonomous images, and ambient assemblages. The chapter also focuses to the impact of artistic collectives and multisensorial artistic practices. The heading of ambient assemblage helps qualify the nexus between spectatorship and participation. The chapter discusses the writing of the Russian theorist Boris Groys, not only because he was quick to identity to significance of collectives, but also to draw from his perspicacious analysis of the blurring between traditional distinctions. Artists saw museums as the ultimate destination for their work. By being included in the museum, their work would be consigned to history and elevated above the flux of popular culture. The fact that most contemporary museums are now inspired by fractals and symmetrical geometries is also no coincidence.
