CTIN 534

My mind is wandering, but here are a few things that I pulled out of here that are sort of skewed (forgive me, i am sick).

"It is expressed not only in art, but ubiquitously in every sphere of contemporary life where chips reside, from automatic tellers and garage door openers..."

Hey now, thats me! But all jokes aside, does this affect the art world? I do understand it influences people and has an effect on their ideas of interactivity, but at the same time I can think of a million and one artistic ways to express interactivity through a garage door opener.

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"artists invited spectators to become participants in art events, from happenings to closed-circuit and recorded video installations."

Very true of the theatrical world, as happenings are sort of a nostalgic practice of today. Reminds us of the audience as a performance aspect, that they do in fact sway and influence the work. Reality TV has sort of ruined this I think...so sad.

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"interactivity involves decision-making or the active participation of a user."

True, but you have to really dig into this to realize that "participation" is really more investment and interest than anything else.

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Since this article is an excerpt of a larger one, it is unfair for me to say that it doesn't go much further into detail as I would like it. There are many good points touched on throughout, especially concerning AI and the computer as a human/human as a computer analogy (turing test). I would very much like to read the rest of the article in order to further analyze this intro.

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"However, the computer cannot be reduced to a medium of communication between human subjects. Its very capacity to give feedback and the immediacy of its response lends what is a computational tool the quality of person. This responsiveness allows it and the virtual entities it displays to pose or function as subjects--however partial, quasi, imaginary and virtual--involved in the interactive exchange."

One last quote, I promise. This is a bit hard to swallow, as an in depth look at virtual representations of humans (totally AI) are in deed limited in scope. I think the possibilities may open up a little when they become avatars for other humans or maybe an emergent behavior, but at the same time that leads us back to the opposing side of her point, computers aren't just a medium of communication. Food for thought.

Found a link to the complete text - apologies for the late notice:
http://www.immersence.com/publications/Mmorse-Poetics-N.html

Some interesting pieces...like most articles, I wish I could see them in action.

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"Far from a dialog based on mutual recognition, communication, and reflection, as Roberts explains, interaction with 'Mom" is "an exchange of emotional tokens, not ideas."

I think interaction has a lot of power here. Quite a bit (if not most, if you're cynical) of communication is an exchange of emotional tokens anyway. However, a user can bring a fair amount of baggage to the table when interacting with a text, and the text can (and should) take advantage of that. Like a Judo throw, interactive texts are usually most effective when the use their user's strengths.

I also think that until (and especially after) computers can really synthesize language, there should be a dwelling of texts at the raw, emotional level.

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"However, the very notion of a poetics of media art suggests that immersion and interactivity are far from incompatible or inversely proportional."

Actually, the thing I got most from this section was catering to other senses than the typical sight and hearing. Davies' breathing feedback, of course, seems much like a SCUBA dive-one of the more "immersive" experiences I've had. Also, immersion is great, but you need something to do, or interact with. Interactivity and immersion aren't mutually exclusive, but often come from different sources. Interactivity might just be shuffling abstract ideas, while immersion may just be an excuse to monopolize the viewer's senses while they're subjected to a linear text.

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