The Phenomenological Hermeneutics Bases on Ernesto Neto's Iinteractive Installation: " While Nothing Happens"

The interactive installation is a form of novel arts which is made and matured by the presence of audience and interaction. In fact، the audience participation in this form of art acts as a fundamental element without which the artwork would be incomplete and nonexistent. The mutual relationship leads the art to be unrestrained that breaks down the traditional expectations of stability and restriction. In the case study of this paper، the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto uses the possibilities of this new instrument in one of his interactive installations named “While Nothing Happens”; he authenticates his artwork through engaging the audience’s maximum sensory faculties such as sight، tactile and olfactory to encourage him/ her to interact. The authors believe that the qualifications of the installation in terms of reconciling the body and the mind are certainly the objective of the phenomenological thought of philosophy; because phenomenological knowledge and especially Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics is based on the reconciliation of the human and the universe. Based on the apparent propinquity of the basis of phenomenological knowledge and the existential philosophy of Ernesto Neto’s interactive installation، the research is initiated with this question: how can one interpret the interaction between the audience and the artwork in “While Nothing Happens” by means of phenomenological hermeneutics analysis? In order to achieve the aim، i. e. finding the phenomenological hermeneutics bases on this interactive installation، the information is documented and then analysed by descriptive-analytical approach. The results show that the audience has an interpretive presence in the arena of the artwork and he/she is not only an identifying subject who defines the concept of an object based on a determined mentality since he/she appreciates the reality not only with referencing to what his/her eye sees but also based on other sensory faculties as tactile and olfactory. The audience’s body is turned into a part of installation elements in so far as he is integrated into the artwork.