Process and (mixed) reality: A process philosophy for interaction in mixed reality environments

Mixed Reality (MR) environments deployed in the service of art present a radical shift in aesthetics. These relatively recent artistic experiments open up many questions relating to the traditional distinction between subjects and objects. I seek to grapple with these questions of reception by viewing works by pioneering artists such as Jeffrey Shaw, Dennis Del Favero, Ulrike Gabriel and the artist group Blast Theory. Rather than viewing interaction within the reductive logic of a psychologized subject that apprehends a static object — that is the case in so much aesthetic theory — I seek to position the aesthetic encounter with MR environments as a hybrid process. In this paper, by using A. N. Whitehead's process philosophy, I propose interaction as the coming together of two conditions; the condition of the machine and what I term the condition of 'userness'.