The term 'intallation art' commonly describes site-specific works, generally within interior spaces, that may also include sound, moving images, or other media components, as well as architecture, performance, and other forms of technology.
Real, 2001, p. 226
Installation art' is a term that loosely refers to the type of art into which the viewer physically enters, and which is often described as 'theatrical', 'immersive' or 'experimental' […] Installation art therefore differs from traditional media (sculpture, painting, photography, video) in that it addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space.
Bishop, 2005, p. 6
Installation is the noun form of the verb to install, the functional movement of placing the work of art in the "neutral" void of gallery or museum. Unlike earthworks, it initially focused on institutional art spaces and public spaces that could be altered through 'installation' as an action. 'To install' is a process that must take place each time an exhibition is mounted; 'installation' is the art form that takes note of the perimeters of that space and reconfigures it.
Suderburg, 2000, p.4
A sculptural work that uses several elements including the display space
Heuman, 1999
Term used to describe mixed-media art works which occupy an entire room or gallery space and into which usually the spectator can enter. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. Installation art emerged from the earlier form of the Environment. One of the originators of Environments was the American artist Allan Kaprow in works made from about 1957 on. In an undated interview published in 1965 Kaprow said of his first Environment: 'I just simply filled the whole gallery up … When you opened the door you found yourself in the midst of an entire Environment … The materials were varied: sheets of plastic, crumpled up cellophane, tangles of Scotch tape, sections of slashed and daubed enamel and pieces of coloured cloth'. There were also lights hung within all this and 'five tape machines spread around the space played electronic sounds which I had composed'. Miscellaneous materials (mixed media), light and sound have remained fundamental to installation art. From that time on the creation of installations became a major strand in modern art, increasingly from about 1990, and many artists have made them. In 1961 in New York, Claes Oldenburg created an early Environment, The Store, from which his Counter and Plates with Potato and Ham comes. One of the outstanding creators of installations using light is James Turrell.
Tate's Website - Glossary
Installation is the noun form of the verb to install, the functional movement of placing the work of art in the 'neutral' void of gallery or museum. Unlike earthworks, it initially focused on institutional art spaces and public spaces that could be altered through 'installation' as an action. 'To install' is a process that must take place each time an exhibition is mounted; 'installation' is the art form that takes note of the perimeters of that space and reconfigures it.
Suderburg, 2000, p. 4
The distinction between art and the documentation of an artistic event begins to blur […] when the art is instruction based. For instance, Sol LeWitts Four Geometric Figures in a Room was commissioned by the Walker Art Gallery in Minneapolis in 1984. Technically, the artwork is the following set of instructions [...]. As the contextual information states, LeWitt's instructions are something that "anyone may execute, in any location, any number of times". The parellels to new media art are striking. In a sense, the input is the room's dimensions, the algorithms are LeWitt's instructions and the output is the drawings on the walls. [T]he point is that with all net.art and significant aspects of all new-media art, as with LeWitt, the artwork that is collected is the instruction set, and the artwork that is experienced is its execution.
Dietz, 2005, p. 89
