Installation art uses sculptural materials and other media to modify the way a particular space is experienced. Installation art is not necessarily confined to gallery spaces and can be any material intervention in everyday public or private spaces.

Installation art incorporates almost any media to create an experience in a particular environment. Materials used in contemporary installation art range from everyday and natural materials to new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality and the internet. Some installations are site-specific in that they are designed to only exist in the space for which they were created.

Interactive installation is a branch off the installation arts category. Usually, an interactive installation will often involve the audience acting on it or the piece responding to the user’s activity. There are several kinds of interactive installations produced, these include web-based installations, gallery based installations, digital based installations, electronic based installations, etc. Interactive installations are mostly seen from the 1990s, when artists are more interested in the participation of the audiences where the meaning of the installation is generated.

With the improvement of technology over the years, artists are more able to explore outside of the boundaries that were never able to be explored by artists in the past. The media used are more experimental and bold; they are also usually cross media and may involve sensors, which plays on the reaction to the audiences’ movement when looking at the installations. By using virtual Reality as a medium, immersive virtual reality art is probably the most deeply interactive form of art. At the turn of a new century, there is a trend of interactive installations using video, film, sound and sculpture.