In 1938, Johan Huizinga first coined the term ‘magic circle’ to denote a space of play wherein special rules apply. Within this circle, which could as easily be a court of justice as it could a card table, he noted that “absolute and peculiar order reigns… Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection” (1949, p. 10).
Similarly, Nguyen points to games as an agential
artform because of their capacity to, in a temporary
and focused way, engage with participants’ abilities
to think, decide, and do. Because of their rule-based structures, games are a way to motivate a specified
end while agreeing to take on specified inefficien-cies (2020,pp. 4–5). Participatory art is much the same,
although it often tends to emphasize intersubjective
rather than competitive behavior. Because it forms a ‘magic circle’ of rules, obstacles, and objectives, participants are enabled to ‘try on’ new ways of connecting with each other without committing to them beyond the scope of the piece.
The procedures that make up a ‘magic circle’ therefore constrain and structure behavior in a way that allows for different modes of agency. In participatory art, these can be broken down into the following categories:
- Facilitation, in which the participant is invited into the piece and/or asked for consent. This may also include setting the aesthetic tone, communicating and enforcing the rules, explaining the interface, safety information, and risk, and answering any questions.
- Rules, which govern participant conduct, method of engagement, and any system of scoring, penalty, or orientation towards an objective.
- Mechanics, which define the actions, movements, system of interaction, and interface available to participants during the experience. This may also include technologies, algorithms, or objects that serve as interlocutors.
- Environment, which encompasses both the terrain and the aesthetics of the immersive space, and may further contain or guide participants in both physical and psychological ways.
- Narrative, which alongside aesthetics serves to place the participant in a particular social situation, conflict, perspective, subjectivity, etc. (Renfro, 2022, pp. 2–3).
This list is not exhaustive, and it may, of course, be interesting artistically-speaking to omit one or more of these items. It is important to note, however, that any of these procedures will in some way strategically alter participant agency in order to “make the audience member into material that is used to compose the performance: an artistic medium” (White, 2013, p. 9). Procedures are established in order to focus an experience and narrow the ‘horizon of participation’ (ibid.), after which participants are welcome to act freely within this created structure.
Considering the extensive use of procedure and its importance in shaping shared experience in participatory art practice, the need for aesthetic procedural literacy becomes clear. Developing a method to approach this critically, however, is less so. In the next sections, I will analyze We Called It Earth, The House of Seasonal Cleaning, and Experiment on Agency #7 by using the above listed procedures as a connecting thread with which to discuss these very different pieces. I will also include my perception as a participant of how the latter two pieces expressed values and outlined specific forms of agency.
