The Responsive Eye show turned museum viewing into a participatory physical spectacle

Evidence

As its title suggested, the show was predicated on viewer response, which might include vertigo or migraines. Some of the work was so irritating that museum guards petitioned for sunglasses. As though trying out a new dance, visitors were performing gyrations before the paintings. Critics observed them bobbing up and down, shaking their heads, even making little jumps in pursuit of ocular kicks. The Responsive Eye was the subject of a Mike Wallace report and a half-hour documentary by twenty-five-year-old Brian De Palma, who took particular pleasure in capturing the giddy opening-night crowd, which included women dressed in do-it-yourself op outfits. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 696

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Viewing is itself an active, transformative act rather than its opposite — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 442; The spectacle gave way to a tactile system that solicits audience participation; Museums should open with one beautiful unlabeled object — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 524 (+2 more)