Artists and Virtual Reality: a meeting of the ways

In order to understand the interest that artists have in virtual reality, this article recalls one of its origins, synthetic images, which was a very prosperous domain for artistic creation. The article goes on to evoke the beginnings of the history of artistic interactive installation, and their flowering during the period when virtual reality came to maturity. The guiding thread here is the question of the “participation of the specatator”, i.e. the introduction of the body of the spectator, with his/her action, perception, emotion and cognition, which are at the very heart of the aesthetic experience during the interaction with the virtual reality. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of the question of the autonomy of virtual creatures having capacities for sensing, for action and for cognition; and the implications of this autonomy in the field of artistic creation.