When relationships with others are at the heart of an artistic creation, the relational protocol is a framework defined by the artist to provide a relatively precise yet flexible organisation of the audience’s relationship with the actors, other audience members or a landscape, etc.

This notion can be used for participatory art, performance art and immersive creations, etc. In the visual arts, the term relational art and “relational aesthetics” is used, an expression coined by art critic Nicolas Bourriaud in an essay published in 1998.