TROUBLING INTERACTIVITY

Content:

Reduced to a seamless loop of action and reaction, interactivity has become the norm in the era of “low latency.” Digital systems have conditioned us to expect and provide immediate feedback.

When children try to zoom in on a printed page using “pinch-to-zoom,” or when patience for protracted political processes is lacking, the question arises:

How has the normalization of interactive responsiveness changed cognitive and social habits?

To question interactivity means looking beyond the sleek surfaces of user interfaces. It is an invitation to reconsider the performative and the foreign in the interactions between living and technological systems and to move toward (or return to) an understanding of interactivity as decision, relationship, and power.

Topics for Discussion

The co-optation of play: Interactions such as browsing, collecting, or role-playing—originally born in pop culture—have been integrated into powerful systems of extraction and domination. Is it possible to reclaim a rich space for critical and reflective forms of interactivity—beyond the simplistic logics of gamification or the mere transformation of linear sequences into interactive processes?

Reactivity, responsiveness (response-ability), refusal: What would it mean to rethink our relationship with interactive technologies in the spirit of responsiveness? Can humans create systems that value the unproductive and the playful while remaining open to acts of care and refusal?

Education in a burning world: Educators face the challenge of teaching interactive art, games, and technology amid ecological collapse, algorithmic warfare, and the rise of opaque AI.

How do they teach interactivity while simultaneously grappling with ethical questions regarding electronic waste, military funding, and the ecological and social costs of digital infrastructures?

Program

• 10:00 Welcome and Warm-up: Hannah Perner-Wilson + Sebastian Quack
• 11:00 Keynote (topic TBD)
• 11:30 – 12:30 Discussion round: Pedagogies of interactivity
• 12:30 – 1:30 PM Lunch break
• 1:30 PM Daphne Dragona: After Interactivity – On Curating Agency in the Age of Immediacy
• 2:00 PM Darren O'Donnell & Elli Kühne: Interaction Before the Artwork
• 2:30 – 3:30 PM Discussion session: Staging interactive culture
• 3:30 – 4:00 PM Closing session
• 5:00 PM Opening ceremony of the SEAM Festival

This symposium takes place concurrently with the SEAM Festival, where students in the “Play and Object / Experimental Play” program will present performative and interactive works from July 3 to 5.

The festival serves as a living laboratory for the topics under discussion and explores the intersections of performing arts, media art, socially engaged practice, and speculative design.

• Date: July 3, 2026, 10:00 AM–4:00 PM | Location: HfS Ladenlokal | Organizer: MA Spiel und Objekt / Experimental Play, HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin
• Registration required

IN ENGLISH