I read this less for the history of the genre than to explore its characteristic features, having thought my own work was going in the direction of installations but realising I didn't really know what this meant. I'm hoping this exploration might create spaces for my work to move into. I've flagged up artists to look at further.
CB begins by acknowledging the looseness with which the term is applied e.g. to any arrangement of objects in space. However some of the key characteristics of an installation that she pulls out are:
'it addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space' that it occupies; the viewer is some way participates in the work, is in the piece, subject intertwined with object
it presents rather than represents texture, light, space etc to us; often the relationship of work to the space around it is heightened
Ernesto Neto
the viewer is 'activated', needs to move round or through the work (some have seen a parallel between this and activation in the social/political arena)
it decentres the viewer in terms of viewpoint (and so reflects more accurately the way we are and relate to the world); the view is always partial; at the same time the need for the viewer's first hand presence in the work is centring:
'instead of eliminating the physically present art object, environmental art's meditative approach creates a secondary, veiled object: the viewer's consciousness as a subject)'
Being both decentred and centred is decentring.
'It may be that an installation works best when 'the ideal model of the subject overlaps with our literal experience, and we genuinely do feel confused, disoriented and destabilised by our encounter with the work.'
Bruce Nauman
(its claims to political and philosophical significance rest on these two characteristics - activation and decentring)
it's usually specific to a location; that location is a specific situation into which the viewer enters; the work is often destroyed at the end of the period of exhibition
may have a theatrical quality, be immersive, immediate, visceral, emotive
has the power to bring about altered consciousness, question our normal way of perceiving which may be deliberately disturbed by the artist (even to the point of engulfing, dissolving them)
Olafur Eliasson
James Turrell
Yayoi Kusama
may also heighten bodily awareness; embodied perception takes precedence over rational understanding 
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