I interact, therefore we are: Mediating relations between self and other in David Rokeby’s interactive art

Over his 40-plus years of professional practice, artist David Rokeby’s work in interactive art has explored diverse mechanics and dynamics of the human self-and-other dichotomy. This article reconstructs Rokeby’s trajectory of practice, to articulate a framework of the relationship between response-ability and responsibility, and between self and other, both in terms of an individual self within the ‘other’ of an interactive installation, and further, using that experience as a portal into relations between a self and numerous ‘others’, namely social environments of fellow persons, as well as the physical environment of the world itself. As such, Rokeby’s creative process has reflected the complex mechanics of creating interactive art that evokes relationships between self and other, seeking balance between responsibility and responsivity in order to afford audiences, or ‘interactors’, new insights into their own engagement within the microcosm of his artworks and to carry that heightened sensibility of their own potential impact and responsibility to the ‘other’ into their daily lives. Such questions of selfhood and other-ness, especially as they relate to responsibility, are highly pertinent to current society, where individual response and responsibility seem invisible, and our sense of engagement to that which is ‘outside’ of our personal ‘inside’ seems heavily lapsed.