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INTERACTIVITY DEMYSTIFIED (SOMEWHAT) Interpersonal, Interplace/space, Intercommunication and Interaction Questions: What does in mean to interACT with others? How do you prepare a meal with a friend or have a conversation until the sun comes up? What is shared or not shared? How does your project DO something with the user? How does it hold a conversation? What do you assume your demographic thinks about your project? Functional Perceptual “A new art medium based on a commitment to real-time interaction between men and machines…” “In a telematic art, meaning is not created by the artist, distributed through the network, and received by the observer. Meaning is a product of the interaction between the observer and the system, the content of which is in a state of flux, of endless change and transformation. In this condition of uncertainty and instability, not simply because of the crisscrossing interactions of users of the network, but because content is embodied in data that is itself immaterial, it is pure electronic difference, until it has been reconstituted at the interface as image, text, or sound. The sensory output may be differentiated further as existing on screen, as articulated structure or material, as architecture, as environment, or in virtual space.” “For the artist the environment augurs new relationships with his audience and his art. He operates at a metalevel. The participant provides the direct performance of the experience. The environmental hardware is the instrument. The computer acts as an orchestra conductor controlling the broad relationships while the artist provides the score.” “1. Interactive art is potentially a richly comp medium quite distinct from the concerns of sculpture, graphic art or music. 2. In order to respond intelligently the computer should perceive as much as possible about the participants behavior. 3. In order to focus on the relationships between the environment and the participants, rather that among participants, only a small number of people should be involved at one time. 4. The participant should be aware of how the environment is responding to them. 5. The choice of sound and visual response of the systems should be dictated by their ability to convey a wide variety of conceptual relationships. 6. The visual responses should not be judged as art nor the sounds as music. The only aesthetic concern is the quality of the interaction.” METAPLAY- “The computer was used to facilitate a unique real-time relationship between the artist and the participant.” Myron Kreuger, Responsive Environements,1977 How does this anticipate new media? Myron Kreuger- “Response is the medium.” Nicolas Negroponte - Architecture/Participatory Design “What I mean to say is more important that what I actually say. The intimacy of a dialogue can be in some sense measured by the ability of each person to recognize the intentions of the other. For example, in cases where people are not well acquainted and from different cultures, speaking to each other can become a profession (diplomacy) where it is very necessary to say exactly what is meant and to be well trained at understanding what is meant.” “With two good friends, codesigners, husband and wife, this is not true. A well-developed working relationship is in fact characterized by one party’s leaving a great deal of information for the other party to infer and assuming it will be inferred correctly. As Oliver Selfridge puts it, an intimate, interactive conversation is, in some sense, the lack of it.” “To make inferences about a statement requires knowledge of the world. To make an inference about the intention of a statement requires some knowledge of the person making it.” “Human-computer interactions should be supported by three levels of model. From the computers’ point of view, these include:
Nicolas Negroponte, Soft Architecture Machines, 1975 Sheizaf Rafaeli - Communications Scholarship “We proceed from a working definition of interactivity, proposed here and developed in the following. Interactivity is a variable characteristic of communication setting. Formally stated, interactivity is an expression of the extent that in a given series of communication exchanges, any third (or later) transmission (or message) is related to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to even earlier transmissions.” “For interactivity to occur, communication roles need to be interchangeable: role assignment and turn-taking are to be non-automatic or nearly so.” “Two-way communication, reaction and interaction” Two-way- bilateral flow, no relationship of messages “Consider the exchange between a person and a vending machine: 1) Sign on machine catches the person’s attention. 2) Person inserts coins in machine. 3) Machine dispenses a candy bar. Is this an interactive situation? Are vending machines an interactive medium? Given the present definition of interactivity, the vending machine encounter, while clearly bi-directional, and perhaps even reactive to a very tasty degree, lacks qualifications for interactivity.” Sheizaf Rafaeli, Interactivity: From New Media to Communication, 1989
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