Audience interaction as art

When we think of an artwork, we usually imagine a finished object — a painting hung on a wall or a sculpture placed carefully on a plinth. In most contemporary art practices, the process is the most important part of the work, where the artist makes important material and interactive discoveries. But when do the discoveries end? Surely they extend beyond the studio space and into the realm of the public eye?

An audience member interacting with materials

Wrestling with this question in my research, I set up interactive installations and displayed works-in-progress and materials that I sourced and found interesting, then observed what the audience would do. The installations were at risk of looking unintentional and not intriguing the audience enough to engage. But what I found was simple, yet radical: audiences didn’t just look at the materials; they used them and changed them. While doing so, their traces become part of the work itself.

Marks, fingerprints, and stories

During exhibitions, I noticed how audiences left behind marks — scratches on acetate sheets, fingerprints in wax, doodles on sand, and even assemblages of objects. Some of these were intentional acts of play, while others were unconscious gestures, like brushing against a surface or moving something slightly out of place.

Each mark told a story. It wasn’t only a trace of contact, but a record of curiosity, hesitation, boldness, or collaboration. Over time, these traces layered on top of one another, transforming the installation into a kind of palimpsest—a living surface that carried the memory of all who had engaged with it.

In addition to the traces, groups of audience members would work together, share ideas and share the narratives they saw in the work. An abstract drawing in sand looked like a paw print to another audience member, who, in turn, made the nest of the creature the paw print belongs to. 

A fingerprint left after an interaction

From residue to artwork

Instead of treating these traces as accidental residue, spillages or dirt, I saw them as essential contributions to be photographed and analysed. In some cases, I took them back into the studio, reworking them into new artworks. The bronze wax captured the warmth and pressure of people’s hands and retained other pieces of rocks, rust and hair. Paper displayed scuffmarks, embossings, folds and tears, and was later fragmented and reincorporated into recycled sheets in the papermaking process along with its embedded histories.

The audience members were not damaging the work — they were extending it.

A cycle of making

This cycle — from artist to audience and back again — revealed an alternative way of thinking about the creative process. The artwork wasn’t a static object presented for passive viewing, but a dynamic field of interaction, one that kept evolving with every touch, sound, or gesture.

Further, and just as importantly, these traces carried knowledge. They showed how audiences made sense of the work, what captured their attention, and how they connected their own experiences to the materials.

What remains

In the end, the traces left behind became the most honest record of interaction — more powerful, in some ways, than artist statements or explanatory texts. They showed that an artwork isn’t fixed; it lives on in the actions and memories of those who encounter it.

I would say this opens questions for us as artists and curators. Are we willing to let the audience in on the process of the work? What dictates the end of an interaction and, therefore, a resulting outcome? What is the best way to process the traces of the audience?