The Transactional Component - from Interaction to Transaction

Interactive media, especially the internet, are often used in an economic context where interactions are actually transactions. We focus on artists who apply economic principles and coin those works as “transactional arts”. We will observe that many accomplished new media works actually have transactional features and that the characteristics of the internet economy seem to facilitate this kind of art form. In the field of transactional arts, buying and selling are means of self-expression, marketplaces are created as a form of art, mesh-ups may resemble online businesses and most importantly, incentives become artistic material. Often a kind of deal-making is involved and transactional art works therefore appeal to some sort of rationality. Transactional artists actually apply economic know-how and therefore create not only aesthetic value but in many cases also economic capital. They therefore tend to fulfill success criteria of both disciplines involved – here art and business.