Interaction as Communication and Construction of Reality: How Humans Negotiate Their Existence Within Systems That Shape Our Life (Examined Through Art and Craft)
What you can find here, on this website, are the seven main fields of research I worked on since 2000 onwards. Each of those seven projects contains a number of small projects (this website fits only a few for now but that’s not all and more will follow) to observe and examine my central interest from different angels. Also, very important to notice, is the progression from material systems → traditional craft → home and belonging → digital mediation → algorithmic communication → models (reality vs non-reality) → identity (and society). The progression suggests a gradual shift from studying systems that humans inherit (tradition), through systems they negotiate (materials, representations, home), to systems that increasingly negotiate humans (algorithms).
The main focus and the central inquiry is:
By looking at how people negotiate life within different systems, I ask if interaction itself can be understood as the language through which this negotiation occurs? The progression between fields is important as it shows how systems change, but interaction is constant. Naturally to come along, is how all of that construct reality.
My argument is that humans (increasingly) communicate less through explicit language and more through interaction with systems. For example, nowadays, instead of telling Spotify what we like we skip songs, instead of explaining ourselves to Google we search, instead to describe our emotions we use emojis, etc. But that has been that way since ever; instead of talking to bureaucracy we fill forms, instead of explaining identity we produce data, instead of saying where we belong we interact with spaces, and so on and on.
Traditionally, sociology treats language as speech, writing, symbols, discourse and signs. I am suggesting interaction itself is communication and describing communication as constructing systems and realities rather than merely exchanging information. That is because communication does not contain messages only, but because communication/interaction continuously negotiates relationships between people, objects, institutions, technologies, algorithms, materials.
Understood here, both as analytic methodologies and specific methods, the art and craft works are not simply representations/mimesis of systems/nature. Instead of saying “This installation represents…” I say, “This installation allows us to observe…” In that case, the artwork becomes an environment where people enter, objects/algorithms/materials respond and participants adapt. They are analytic sites in which relationships between people, materials, objects, institutions, technologies, algorithms, etc. can be experienced and examined. Thus, the interaction we can experience in art and craft for me is the main unit of analysis here and the seven projects therefore function as seven investigations of forms of interaction (and their progression becomes increasingly complex from project to project for a reason).
The seven projects with emphasis on progression are as follow:
6 — Material
2000, Ceramics, glass, paintings. Communication here is examined as an interaction between concrete material and an invisible system that emerges through layers of material and the process itself. It is not about material behaviour. It is about negotiation between human intention and non-human agency. How does a system emerge through that interaction? How do we respond and interact with it?
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5 — Traditional pottery
2000/2017, How communities negotiate identity through repeated interactions with objects, skills and traditions and how interaction creates culture? How is a system inherited? How do we learn a system? This is my most comprehensive body of work so far and includes 17 years of intensive research on the craft, artistic, and social aspects of traditional pottery in north-west Croatia.
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4 — The Home
2022/23, How does belonging emerge from repeated interactions with people, places and objects and how a home becomes negotiated rather than possessed? How does a system produce belonging and displacement? Where do we belong within it? How does displacement feel?
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3 — Digital Media
2020/22, Exploring digital media as a communication between what the object is in nature (a physical system) and what the object becomes on a screen (a concept or a simulacrum of a system). How does a system mediate reality? How does it mediate us?
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2 — Algorithm
2023, How interaction itself become organised by autonomous systems and how algorithms begin participating in social negotiation? How does a system organise communication itself? How does it communicate through us?
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1 — Models of Reality vs Reality Itself
2022, When humans treat a dynamic, living entity (a physical system) as if it were a rigid spreadsheet, a blueprint, or a mathematical equation (the notion of a system). How institutions negotiate reality through categories, how interaction becomes bureaucratic, how people learn to communicate using classifications. How does a system simplify and organise reality? How does it model us?
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0 — Identity, individual authenticity
How does a person keep—or become—authentic in interaction with all those systems? How do we remain ourselves within it? How can an individual remain authentic within systems that increasingly prescribe identity? Authenticity inside simulated systems?
As you can see, this 0th project acts as both an independent body of work and a very important human line in the previous six. Each earlier project is not about how systems work or about interaction from an art and craft point of view, but rather they reveal a (different) mechanism through which systems create reality, shape society and affect identity. This one asks what happens to the individual once those systems begin defining who they are. It shifts the focus from interaction to the subject living inside them.