Proxemia: a sociotechnical analysis of an electronic artwork

This article puts forward a sociotechnical analysis of the electronic artwork Proxemia, created by the Argentine artist Mariela Yeregui. In the course of this analysis, aspects of the creative process have been selected which highlight most significantly how this process is not restricted to the artist’s original intention, but rather that it reshapes and expands in line with the agents involved in the various instances on which the piece is shown.

To this end, there will be an analysis of the artwork’s progression through two of the galleries and institutions at which it has been installed and exhibited. From that point, it is our intention to highlight the conflicts and solutions that have affected the piece in each of these instances. This will encompass the flexibility that the concept of problem acquires during this process, its sociotechnical construction and the operating definitions constructed by the various agents involved with respect to the work of art.

Based on the unique case put forward by Proxemia, the objective of this article is to analyse how, in the production of robotic art, certain factors interfere, intertwine and complexify the process, such as institutionality, variables related to management policies, representations of the artistic scene, the crossover between different knowledge systems and even local considerations.

In this respect, we aim to argue that the aforementioned variables interfere with the process not only merely as conditioning factors, or as a framework or context, but rather that, on the contrary, they acquire agency over the final experience of the artwork, influencing the mode in which the piece configures a way of seeing the world.