Seeking Deeper Contact
Interactive Art as Metacommentary
Erkki Huhtamo1
Abstract:
The term 'interactivity' has been applied to such a
diverse range of technological forms that its meaning has become unclear.
Furthermore, a number of contradictions underlie the concept and raise
innumerable questions. This article argues that one way of approaching this
problematic area is through the analysis of interactive art, since much recent
work can be read as a 'metacommentary' on the state of interactivity. Through a
detailed discussion of a small selection of work and their modes of address, the
paper endeavours to demonstrate how interactive art can de-mythicise and
de-automate prevailing discourses and applications of interactivity and thereby
undertake a cultural critique of the nature of interactivity.
Introduction
'Interactivity' has become one of the keywords of
the techno-saturated culture of the 1990s. We have seen a proliferation of all
kinds of things interactive from computer games and interactive television to
interactive banking, shopping and networking. Interactivity is featured daily
in a growing number of pubic discourses, from entertainment and education to
marketing and even art. This proliferation and simultaneous diversification has
obscured rather than clarified the concept and the range of meanings assigned
to it. For example, it is not easy to fit the various 'off-line' and 'on line'
applications (epitomised by the differences between CD-ROM-based multimedia and
the Internet) under the same 'interactivity umbrella'. As early as 1990, one
critic called interactivity the 'already soggy buzzword of the 90s' (2) If it
ever had any conceptual integrity, it is quickly disappearing The word, and its
most fashionable derivative, interactive media, are rapidly becoming mere
floating signifiers. (3)
Yet, one might argue that the spreading of
computer-mediated interactivity in the realm of our everyday lives does make a
difference: it changes our relationship to the audio-visual experience by
accustoming us to a new subject position. (4) A case in point is video and
computer games, which have been instrumental in the process. They are
ubiquitous and have a strong holding power, persuading the player into
repeated, cyclical intercourse. They 'automate' the interaction leading the
player to 'think with his/her fingers'. Yet, instead of just being a bystander,
the player is also given a sense of being an agent. The games challenge
him/her, promising mastery as a reward for surmounting increasingly complex
obstacles. The player enters 'microworlds', not just to observe, but to
reorganise and to - at least virtually - change them as well. (5) The subject
position constituted by computer-based games seems more dynamic and
'responsive' than those constituted by mainstream cinema and broadcast
television. (6)
Thus, it has been asserted that interactive systems
position us in a 'conversational' situation: '[t]he model of interaction is a
conversation versus a lecture'. (7) But with whom or with what this
conversation takes place (e.g. the machine, the software, the maker 'behind'
the software, oneself, other people or 'avatars', non-human but human-like
entities etc.) is a much more complex question. And the nature of the
'conversation' obviously depends on the application in question. On-line
interaction, for example, is not merely a new channel of 'human-to-human'
interaction via the Internet (as opposed to the 'isolation' of playing with
Nintendo's Virtual Boy, for example) - as has been suggested by its champions -
but a highly complex system of interfaces, information filters and virtual
partnerships with human and non human partners. The nature of interactive
networking specifically and its conversational modes, however, lay beyond the
scope of this article and would require a separate study.
Brenda Laurel and other interface researchers have also
proceeded from the notion of human-computer 'conversation' to that of the
common ground. (8) The metaphor of conversation implies an exchange between
more or less distinct entities separated/mediated by an interface
(concrete/mental), whereas the idea of common ground is more symbiotic: it
implies sharing 'mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions'. (9)
If both human and computer can gradually learn to inhabit this shared terrain,
so the argument goes, the result will be the growing 'transparency' of the
interface (to the point of its 'disappearance') and the eventual dissolution of
their respective identities. The basic assumption is that there is a growing
'naturalness', immediacy and intimacy to the human-machine relationship. (10)
However, these notions are problematic, particularly
if viewed from a wider social and cultural perspective. Yet this problematic is
by no means new; issues relating to the human machine encounter have been
raised since the advent of the industrial revolution. (11) The relationship has
most often been presented in terms of clear polar opposites, with the machine
positioned, for instance, as the humble servant to its human 'master' or as
rebellious monster. (12) In the age of interactivity, this oppositional logic
seems to be in the process of being superseded by one of integration and
merger: cyborg logic. The traditional distinctions seem to be collapsing, but,
of course, the figure of the cyborg has its own cultural contradictions.
Some of the problematics and contradictions
underlying 'interactivity' become evident if we look at interactivity in
relation to such concepts as automation, anthropomorphism and immersion.
Automation as a cultural idea has been deeply intertwined with the idea of
modernisation. (13) Automated machines were said to eliminate physical work,
but they also eliminated (continuous, tactile) contact with the machine which
functioned independently (yet safely under control). In a sense the television
set was a 'paradigmatic' piece of automated technology, just like the automatic
washing machine: the active intervention of the human subject was restricted to
certain controlling and programming functions. (14) If interactivity really has
become a paradigmatic model for our relationship to technology, it needs to be
related to the wider social and ideological questions raised by the aftermath
of modernity. Why embrace interactivity in place of the (seemingly) greater
ease offered by automatic devices? Why desire a constant intercourse with machines
instead of a simple sense of mastery? That said, is there a clear-cut
distinction?
Interactive systems are also often presented in
anthropomorphic terms, with the interface disguised as a 'face', a partner with
human-like attributes. But is technology really getting more human-like or are
we becoming more machine-like: cyborgs? What are the psychological and cultural
effects of anthropomorphised technology? Shouldn't computerised gadgets be
presented as what they 'really' are -non-human entities - instead of dressing
them up as our peers? Yet, what if the anthropomorphism extends, after all,
'beneath the surface', to the 'soul' of the machine? And finally, the concept
of immersion is often evoked in connection with interactive technology. It
refers to the 'bond' created between the user and the machine, defining the
moment of (virtual) 'penetration' into the system. Although immersion seems to
imply an active 'rush' (resonating with masculine sexual connotations into
something, its equation with interactivity would be misleading. 'Being
immersed' into something can be a passive experience, too, aided by the
temporary suspension of one's own will.
Towards a new assessment of interactivity
And there are other questions to ask. Do interactive
systems have a liberating or rather a constraining effect on us (e.g. in
'interactive marketing')? How much of their 'interactive potential' is
hype-simulated rather than 'real'? Should interactive systems contain a
didactic subtext explicitly guiding the user or should they be 'intuitive',
relying on trial and error? What possibilities do interactive systems offer for
counter-readings and counter uses? Does it matter that many of them are
'toy-versions' of those developed by the military-industrial complex for
surveillance and destruction? For, as Margaret Morse has shown, there isn't
necessarily any phenomenological difference between the experience of playing a
video game and waging a 'remote-controlled' war: '[t]he virtual presentation
does not necessarily signal the appropriate degree of belief to lend what we
see, hear and experience A simulation can become remote action and be virtually
identical as to the look and response of symbols on display.' (l5)
One way of approaching these questions is by
analysing interactive artworks, since it can provide at least some partial
answers. Since the late 1980s there has been a significant surge in interactive
art practices - although their 'roots' and 'preforms' can of course be traced
back to earlier periods, from Dadaism and Constructivism to the 'participatory'
and 'responsive' art forms of the 1960s. (16) This surge is obviously related
to the emergence of interactive technology from the R&D environment and its
establishment as a commonplace authoring tool, a media-cultural consumer item
and a bulging discursive figure. (17) Yet just like the field of interactivity
in general the field of interactive art is not homogeneous, but split between
different production and exhibition contexts - schematically identified as 'the
art world' and 'the computer world' - which impose their own definitions. (18)
Some interactive installations are independent productions or supported by
public-cultural funds, whereas other pieces claiming the label of 'art' have
originated within or on the fringes of the military-industrial complex. And in
the case of interactive artworks produced within or on the fringes of the
corporate world, it could be claimed that their main intention is to promote
products and to camouflage the less philanthropic aspects of corporate
profiles. (19) In this sense interactive art is part of the obscurity and lack
of definition surrounding the concept of interactivity. However, a significant
proportion of interactive art is also actively trying to make sense of itself,
as well as of the more general context.
Whereas the technological art of the 1960s and 1970s
often had a scientific and formalistic orientation (aimed at unleashing the
unused and undiscovered potential 'hidden' in new technologies), much recent
work highlights the ideological, cultural and social issues enveloping
technology and largely giving it its identity. Such works can be read as a
continuing 'metacommentary' on the state of interactivity, and a discussion of
some of this kind of work forms the main focus of this article. The term
'metacommentary' is used to refer to an art practice which continuously
de-mythicises and de-automates prevailing discourses and applications of
interactivity' from the inside' utilising the very same technologies for
different ends. It probes (and sometimes anticipates) technological
breakthroughs and, most importantly, raises ethico-philosophical issues. By
displacing prevailing applications from their culturally legitimised sites,
such an art practice undertakes a cultural critique of the nature of
interactivity. At the same time, it is also concerned with its own historical
roots and preforms which are traced back beyond the digital era. (20)
It would be misleading, however, to claim that such
work represents the entire spectrum of interactive art. There is, for example,
much significant artistic activity in the field of artificial life - such as
the work of Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Karl Sims, Michael Tolson,
to name but a few - which is more closely related to the scientific and
formalistic lineage mentioned above. Yet even here, it is important to make a
distinction between a creative software engineer and an artist, difficult
though it may be. Art is not just about building gadgets or writing innovative
code; it is about cultural consciousness, ethics and the politics of
representation. Due to space limitations, however, I have chosen to exclude
this body of work, as we as the artistic activity currently taking place on the
Internet. This is not to suggest that such work is not relevant to my argument,
but rather that I have specifically focused my investigation on some of the
ways other kinds of interactive art practices are contributing to a new
assessment of interactivity. Although this limits the range of work under
consideration, the aim is to demonstrate an argument, rather than present a
comprehensive survey.
The exchange of addresses
One way of approaching the analysis of interactive art
is to consider its modes of address, i.e. the ways in which an interactive
artwork establishes and maintains a relationship with the user. Audio-visual
theory identifies two main modes of address: 'indirect address' (the third
person mode dominant in classical narrative cinema) and 'direct address' (the
first person mode dominant in broadcast television). In an audio-visual text
dominated by indirect address the events 'happen' and the screen-personalities
appear to live in a self-sufficient world; they don't openly acknowledge the
presence of the viewer. In a text dominated by direct address the viewer is
explicitly constituted as the recipient of the programme output. Most
audio-visual texts, however, are not 'pure'. Rather, they are complex combinations
of different modes of address with their various sub-categories. (21)
In classical cinema the spectator is 'sutured' into
the cinematic spectacle by constantly changing points-of-view and other
psycho-physiological bonds. The impersonal third person mode dominates, with
the characters living in a world 'behind a window' (or a keyhole) and the
spectator watching it from the outside. There are moments, however, when the
characters seem to talk 'directly to you', but even these are motivated within
the fictional world. The spectator may be carried into the fiction through
psychological identification with the characters' points of view, but
ultimately s/he is always returned to her/his original position as a voyeur, a
libidinous outsider.
In broadcast television, however, the spectator is
constituted as an acknowledged subject of the programme flow. A crucial role is
played by the presenter, news reader or anchor-person, who addresses the
implied spectator directly. All other material on TV (including re-runs of
classical films) is subordinated to this recurring address. These presenters
can thus be seen as assuring representatives of the televisual world, while the
spectator is constituted as a 'partner', a representant of the domestic world.
These worlds are connected by various cues, such as the screen personality's
gaze and gestures (MTV's Ray Cokes seems to be on the brink of pushing himself
through the screen into the spectator's living room, postcards and photos in
his hand, engaged in an ongoing telephone conversation) and the studio set
(e.g. by evoking the home interior on breakfast television and soap operas).
Thus, both cinema and television purport to
constitute, in their own ways, the viewer as a protagonist. The psychological
identification used by the former is intensified by the first-person mode and
the ideology of real-time broadcast prevailing in the latter. In both cases,
however, the protagonism is illusory or simulated. According to Malcolm Le
Grice, '[t]o be a protagonist there must be a perceivable relationship between
action and effect. In other words, an action on the part of the viewer must be
able to change the course of events which follow from that action' (22) Even in
phone-in transmissions the protagonism of the remote participant is very
limited. The participant is treated just as a casual representative of the
anonymous mass audience, and the terms of 'changing the course of the events'
are strictly predefined.
Interactive systems, however, appear to fulfil the
condition defined by Le Grice. They require the user's active and physical (not
just mental) participation: not only does the interactive work address the
user, but the user also addresses the work. David Tafler has called this
situation 'a second person (I-you) exchange'. (23) The television spectator
addresses the television mainly by turning the TV set on or off, or by
channel-surfing with the remote control. But in an interactive situation an
'exchange of address' (implying a change in the direction of address, too) takes
place between the human and the computer. Similarly, a 'working technical
definition' of interactivity used at MlT's Media Lab describes it as the
'[m]utual and simultaneous activity on the part of both participants, usually
working toward some goal, but not necessarily (my emphasis). (24) Furthermore,
while one of the main functions of the direct address on television is to
persuade the spectator to watch a certain programme without changing the
channel, the direct address built into an interactive system requires one to
make choices to continually reconsider the situation. The user cannot let
his/herself be passively carried away by the programme flow; s/he is kept in a
state of constant alertness.
Yet, even the recurrent direct address of an interactive
system may (even when it is apparently meant simply to guide the user through
the database) serve a 'binding function'. This has been observed in the
excessive playing of video games. The player gets 'glued to' a game, trying
repeatedly to master more of its levels. The exchange between the player and
the game becomes, in a way, 'automated'. A reflex-like psycho-physiological
challenge/response mechanism replaces reflection and intellectual
decision-making. Another example might be the 'shopping malls' on interactive
television and commercial network services. (25) Here direct address is used as
a strategy for persuasion in a manner reminiscent of traditional television
commercials - interactivity is merely superimposed. The interactivity allows
the viewer to initially scan a supply of products, make comparisons and engage
in occasional game-like actions (e-g. trying lipstick on a virtual model). Such
interaction seems to support (some kind of) reflection, yet this happens
strictly within pre-set, and economically hard-wired, margins. However, the
interactivity functions primarily as a feed-back channel that merely
facilitates selling faster than mail order phone numbers on a TV screen or shop
addresses in a newspaper advert: to make a purchase the viewer has only to
click on a virtual button and type in their credit card number.
The fact that such systems are frequently so eagerly
grouped under the same umbrella as CD-ROM titles like Myst (Cyan
Inc/Broderbund, 1993), or even interactive artworks, should make one wary. It
suggests most people are content to define interactive media as a certain kind
of technology, without considering the uses to which it is put. This makes it
possible to refer to 'interactive shopping malls', although it's probably more accurate
to speak of 'enhanced traditional marketing'. The problem lies in the failure
to grasp the fact that media products cannot be defined as interactive merely
because they use or have access to certain kinds of hardware and software. The
crucial question is one of contextualisation, both at the level of
institutionalised practices/applications and of discursive formations. Artists
are highly conscious of this, which gives their endeavour in the field of
interactive work extraordinary weight . (26)
Conversations with the screen
The mode of direct address in interactive works can
take different forms, but the most explicit is the use of a fictional 'screen
personality' as a mediator between the virtual world 'inside' the computer and
the user. And anthropomorphic guide figures or 'interface agents' have received
much attention (although no univocal approval) in the field of computer
interface design. A well-known 'classic' experiment was App e Computer's Guides
project in the 1980s, (27) and more recently, a team lead by Pattie Maes at the
MIT Media Lab has also conducted research into 'intelligent agents'. (28)
Although such research projects clearly build on the anthropomorphic themes
that had already been taken up in cybernetics and Al research, they also - in a
way - give concrete expression to the tendency observed (by Sherry Turkle and
others) among many computer users to anthropomorphise their computers.
Since the association of the computer with media
culture is still a recent one, it is unsurprising that different interface
personalities may still be associated with the 'agents' encountered in more
traditional media, such as television. This association has been enhanced in
some computer-based applications by utilising full-screen talking heads stored
on a computer-controlled videodisc. Such applications purport to fulfil
television's recurrent (but repeatedly frustrated) promise of making the viewer
a true protagonist. This goal is evident, for example, in photorealistic arcade
video games, such as Atari's Mad Dog McCree, an 'interactive Western' released
in the early 1990s. The player, holding a 'revolver', is engaged in a series of
shoot-outs which are linked together by a loose narrative. The screen
personalities address the player directly, challenging, seducing and even scolding
him/her, thus enhancing his/her sense of protagonism. The verisimilitude of the
game is increased by using actual filmed scenes instead of computer graphics.
With the advances in digital video, more and more CD games are striving for
similar effects, e g. the CD-i title Burn: Cycle (TripMedia, 1994) and the
CD-ROM Johnny Mnemonic (Sony Imagesoft, 1995).
A comparable technical solution was used in Lynn
Hershman and Sara Roberts' interactive artwork Deep Contact (1989-90), but with
a very different result. As in Hershman's earlier videodisc Lorna ( 1983), the
installation aspect of the work evokes the domestic living-room atmosphere
since the computer screen 'doubles' for the TV screen. We communicate with a
screen personality named Marion, dressed - or rather undressed as a hostess and
reminiscent of the 'Call Girl' spots on American commercial TV. Marion appears
at certain points in the HyperCard-based program, addressing and seducing the
user, and by touching (via a touchscreen) parts of Marion's body the user can
select paths to enter environments representing different sexual fantasies. The
female body (or rather its graphic representation) thus serves as a menu that
both 'contains' and mediates the erotic experiences it promises.
The central role of tactility in this piece is clear
from the opening screen, where we see Marion knocking on the screen from the
inside, begging somebody to 'touch her'. There is no other way to start the
program. The insistence on the connection between direct address and
screen-mediated tactility recalls Douglas Davis' television performances from
the 1970s. Davis requested the home audience to touch him via the TV screen.
But whereas his gesture was a purely conceptual and metaphorical one, in Deep
Contact the user has a way to respond, to enter into a 'conversation'. In their
own ways, however, both cases underline the distance built into the colloquial
direct address of a normal evening's television viewing While television images
may challenge, they never respond; they constantly seduce, but they refuse
fulfilment.
Of course, one has to ask with whom the user of Deep
Contact converses, and, more importantly, who is the (implied) user. Obviously
an application like Deep Contact provides the user with multiple 'partners':
the screen, the software, the figure of Marion, the implied artist and -
oneself. The work clearly purports to expose taboos that are embedded in our
relationship with representations of sexuality and gender, (29) and tactility
itself has been a taboo in Western visual communication (according to the
prevailing classical canon, artworks should be admired from a distance, 'with
eyes only'). In his analysis of visual taboos Amos Vogel states: 'The
designation of taboo foods, objects, idols, acts, and persons establishes a
system of rigidly enforced rules of order and social control: for the taboo
object is thought to be "contagious", its pollution inevitably
transmitted to the violator. The fear of contagion is also a fear of
temptation.' (30) By touching Marion's (simulated) body the user is led to
encounter taboos face-to-face, and to investigate socially sanctioned
mechanisms of voyeurism.
Yet, like the spectator positions constructed by
more traditional audio-visual media, the user position constituted by Deep
Contact is also gendered. The user is led to ask, whose fantasies is s/he
experiencing, on whose chair is s/he sitting? Judging superficially from the
imagery it would be easy to claim that the fantasies exposed are masculine and
respond to male desires. This has obviously led some feminist critics to
dismiss the work as ideologically confused, ultimately little more than a
re-enactment of the desires it exposes, in spite of its attempts at creating a
critical discourse on sexuality. Although made by feminist-oriented artists,
the work would be seen as offering nothing for women. An alternative, however,
is to see Deep Contact as a kind of laboratory or probing ground for sexual
politics, allowing users to adopt different gender positions and act out roles
(and can thus be viewed as a precursor to the collective on-line MOOs).
In her later interactive installations Hershman has
continued exploring the mechanisms of seduction and scopic power by placing the
problematic in more specific historical settings (which is in line with the
recent 'archeological approach' in media art). (31) A Room of One's Own (1992)
takes the late 19th century peepshow machine - a voyeristic device for
masculine desire par excellence- as its reference point, while America's Finest
(1995) refers to the ambivalent perceptual and phenomenological relationship
between firearms and moving image technology by evoking the early cross over of
these technologies, Etienne Jules Marey's 'kronophotographic gun' (1882). In
both cases, basically unidirectional devices for the scopic and physical
exercise of power are subverted by various strategies: by addressing the user
directly (via a female gaze and voice), by incorporating the user's own 'mirror
image' into the scopic field, and by making the user's visual and tactile
actions trigger these reactions.
Menus and maps: present or absent
Of course, direct address from the interactive work
does not have to be personified in anthropomorphic creatures. It can assume the
form of a short instruction ('touch the screen', 'click on "left" or
"right" to proceed', etc.) or that of a menu or a map. The menu is
used, for example, in audio-visual 'poetry machines' to provide the user with
instructions and tools to allow him/her to make 'compositions' based on the
elements in the database. Good examples of this are Bill Seaman's installations
The Exquisite Mechanism of Shivers (1992) and Passage Sets/One Pulls Pivots at
the Tip of the Tongue (1994-95), which offer the user multiple ways of
organising the audio-visual fragments of poetry stored in the computer's memory
and on videodiscs.
In other works a map may be visible on the screen,
perhaps to be used intermittently when needed; or it can be included as a
separate, free-standing 'board', as in Jeffrey Shaw's The Legible City
(1989-90) and Michael Naimark's VBK - A Moviemap of Karlsuahe (1990-91). In
these 'virtual voyaging' or' surrogate travelling' pieces the map simulates the
role of an ordinary city map, helping users orient themselves in a virtual
city. Simultaneously it points out the limits of the virtual world, defining
the possible field of interaction. Works like these combine two different
perceptual approaches, overview and immersion. (32) The former gives the user a
'bird's eye view', the latter a 'labyrinth perspective', which presents a
restricted visual field, hiding most of the potential scenes 'behind the
corner'.
The opposite of such clearly mapped works are pieces
that refuse to guide the user at all. Such works either dispense with direct
address or suppress its anchoring function. Ken Feingold's The Surprising
Spiral (1991) doesn't even announce itself as interactive; the spectator is
supposed to find out by accident or by inferring it from the overall design of
the installation. In addition, Feingold's installation also leaves the user
with a permanent doubt about the nature of the interaction The user operating
the book-shaped touchscreen will never be certain of the real outcome of
his/her actions since Feingold has resorted to random operations in programming
the piece. The images and sounds may appear in real-time, in direct response to
the user's touches; however, there may also be a time lag; or the choices may
even have been triggered by the previous user. In Le Grice's terms (quoted
above), the user of The Surprising Spiral is deliberately prevented from being
a protagonist in the proper sense of the word.
Much the same applies to a more recent work, where I
can see my house from here so we are (1995). This time Feingold has created a
networked, telerobotic installation. Three remote users control little robots
moving on a common playground, surrounded by mirrors. The users can see and
hear and talk to each other through the robots' sensing organs. Once again,
Feingold has done his best to obstruct the relations between seemingly
clear-cut elements. Instead of using a closed-circuit video connection, which
would give a clear video image, Feingold has resorted to the still imperfect
Internet M-Bone. The slow image update rate makes perception through the robots
eyes very difficult. The robots look almost the same; and because of the
surrounding mirrors it is hard to decide whether one is staring at another
robot or at the reflection of one's own robot. The robots are also connected to
wires rather than remote controlled, which makes them move even more awkwardly,
frequently getting stuck. (33)
Feingold's pieces are labyrinths which neither show
the way through the maze nor promise to reveal it little by little. The user
remains face to-face with impenetrable objects. Some people must be frustrated
by the impossibility of mastering the 'rules of the game', even after many
attempts; they feel deceived, or attribute their problem to a technical failure
or imperfect programming. In doing so they evaluate the work, consciously or
unconsciously, with pre-set ideas about interactivity. One of them is the
notion that there has to be a possibility of learning or mastering the system.
Actually, there is a didactic subtext in most interactive artworks, whether it
is emphasised or not: the works contain instructions, either explicitly or by
letting the user learn as s/he proceeds. And such interactive artworks share
this feature with the functional, goal-oriented applications of interactivity.
Automated teller machines (ATMs) and video games
differ from each other in many respects, yet both of them are programmed to
control the forms of the interaction and to channel it towards a clearly stated
goal. The user of an ATM wants money or to pay a bill; the player of a video
game wants to solve riddles or to jump from one level to the next to eventual y
reach the goal. But an artwork is nevertheless entitled to retain, even
augment, its ambiguity, and Feingold would probably emphasise that his pieces
are artworks, not video games. A painter or a poet doesn't provide the keys to
his/her work; why should an interactive artist be expected to do so? In this
respect Feingold's creations could be read as a meta-interactive works. They
question certain donnees of interactivity, including the nature of protagonism
in the human-machine relationship. In much the same way, Feingold's videotape
Un chien delicieux (1991) questioned the ideology of documentary truth.
Feingold simply added a fictional voice-over 'translation' to authentic
documentary footage, without marking the result as fictional. The end product
probably deceives most viewers at first viewing, and this causes a problem: how
will the work be able to achieve its goal (rather than simply cause anger or
frustration)? (34) Rather than look for answers, Feingold seems to put the very
principles of audio-visual literacy on trial.
Cinema and interactivity
The use of direct address in interactive systems is
central because of the constant need to involve the subject Thus, when indirect
address is used it must almost inevitably be subordinated to some form of
direct address. This is certainly the case with 'interactive movies', such as
the one by the Czechoslovakian filmmaker Raduz Cincera being shown in the
Cineautomate theatre at the Futuroscope theme park near Poitiers, France. The
audience can decide - at certain moments - the way in which the story is to proceed
by a majority vote, using push-buttons connected to an electronic voting
system. Unfortunately, the voting takes place only at certain crucial points,
which are over-determined by multiple forms of direct address: stopping the
film, projecting graphic signs on the screen, turning on the lights and even
having a live hostess appear on the stage to direct the voting! Yet the film
itself, entitled Le vieil arbre et les enfants, proceeds from a traditional
narrative position which does not acknowledge the presence of the audience.
Although more recent systems, such as movieGames
developed by the New York-based company Interfilm, have achieved more developed
interfaces, a wider variety of alternative storylines and branching points, and
a more seamless experience; the 'audience participation' still depends on
majority decisions. (35) It is difficult to introduce intelligent multi-person
interactivity into a situation in which a traditional audience sits in an
auditorium. There is still some truth in Naimark's observation: 'The Movie
World Understand Realness But Not Interactivity [...] The Computer World
Understands Interactivity But Not Realness.' (36) The problem with multi-person
interactive cinema is related to the very fact of combining it with a 19th
century idea of public spectacle and the audience. It would probably be wiser
to let such immersive cinema spectacles as Imax and Omnimax remain as they are,
in the non-interactive mode, and look for the foundations of new multi-person
interactive experiences in networked systems and the 'alone together' modes
they offer. This field has been pioneered by applications ranging from early
MUDs and Lucasfilm's Habitat (1985-) to the commercially highly successful
BattleTech Centres. (37)
An attempt to mediate between the movie world and
the computer world (in Naimark's sense) are the interactive cinema pieces by
Grahame Weinbren. The Erl King (with Roberta Friedman, 1986) and Sonata (1992)
resemble other interactive computer installations, in that they allow only one
person to interact at a time via a touchscreen, while others form an audience
who observes the interaction from monitors incorporated into the installation.
The audiovisual material in these pieces (mostly camera images stored on
videodiscs) is heterogeneous in form, ranging from performance and 'emblematic'
shots to didactic and narrative sequences In Sonata there is even a complete
narrative movie, shot by Weinbren and based on Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata,
'hidden' in the database.
While interacting with these pieces the user is
drawn into a rapid-fire exchange with constantly changing modes of address.
None is given absolute authority over the others, even though there seems to be
some hierarchical structuring. In Sonata, the image of wolves sitting on the
branches of a tree and staring at the user (from Freud's case history of the
Wolf Man) unexpectedly appears and seems to give some kind of interpretative
frame, and Weinbren himself has referred to the Freudian dream narrative as a
subtext for his compositions. The viewer is meant to be carried into a
'subjunctive' state, 'keenly aware that there are, "behind" or within
each image, other images and image sets that may not show on screen in the
current performance of the piece.' (38)
Even though The Erl King includes graphic cues to
direct the user, s/he is mostly carried by his/her choices in a relatively
unanticipated way. The images in both the direct and indirect modes function
here in an undifferentiated manner as 'symptoms'. Both may attract touches
according to the user's wishes and lead them to penetrate additional layers or
images and sounds. In Sonata there seems to be fewer cues on the screen (and
the interaction is smoother, thanks to the digitalisation of the signal from
the videodisc) than in The Erl King. But the 'cognitive map' behind the images
and sounds seems easier to master than in The Erl King. (39)
There are long segments in Sonata during which the
hand of the user functions as a kind of real-time film editor. While the
Kreutzer Sonata sequence is running, the user can reveal different views (e.g.
camera-angles, framings) of the same scene by touching the upper side of the
screen. Split-screen effects are activated by sliding one's hand laterally
across the screen, revealing another story or scene that looks as if it were
taking place simultaneously. Here the user's hand intrudes in a self sufficient
world (via an indirect mode of address) 'from the outside'. This situation
seems to have a parallel in that large group of video games which are observed
from an objective 'camera position' and are manipulated (using a joystick) by
the player's 'invisible hand'. There is a difference, however. in a video game
the player is represented by an agent who is controlled by the user, whereas in
Sonata the user is more genuinely outside. S/he affects the discursive frame
(the 'montage' on one layer or between layers) more than the outcome of the
'story' within it. Mythological associations with 'God's hand' come easily to
mind.
Puppeteers as puppets
In terms of the modes of address, artificial reality
systems provide a peculiar kind of human computer interface. The user is
confronted with his/her own presence in a computer-generated environment.
Technically these systems are a hybrid between closed-circuit video systems and
computer technology. (40) The role of video as an input/output loop recalls the
closed circuit video installation, which was a favourite form among video
artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pieces like Live/Taped Video
Corridor (1968-70) by Bruce Nauman and Interface (1972) by Peter Campus allowed
the spectator to see his/her own image in real time on different configurations
of monitors. This created a mirror-like situation, which (among other things)
investigated the viewing subject's identity in relation to real and virtual
spaces.
In artificial reality installations the image of the
user's body, scanned in 'through' a video camera, is superimposed on the
artificial reality created in the computer), allowing the user to interact with
the real-time body movements of the 'puppet on the screen'. This is true of
Myron Krueger's Videoplace system, which has had numerous incarnations (since
1974), and it also applies to the Canadian Vivid Group's Mandala (1986-). But
in an artificial reality environment the presence of the human agent does not
have to be visible - it can also be audible Body movements can create a
soundscape by triggering a variety of virtual sound effectors, as in David
Rokeby's Very Nervous System (1986-).
One peculiarity of these systems lies in their
theoretically complex interplay between simultaneously retaining and
annihilating distance. Keeping physical distance - remaining in the video
camera's field of vision - is a requirement for immersion in the virtual
environment. This situation could be referred to as 'tele tactility'. The
result is a kind of a bilocation, an experience whereby the body seems to be in
two places simultaneously. On a discursive cultural historical level this seems
to recall the literary tradition of the Doppelganger or the field of paranormal
phenomena (experiences in which the subject sees her/his body as if from the
outside, as in levitation). These parallels cannot, however, be carried very
far. A basic difference lies in the fact that in such 'fantasies' there is no
'remote control'-relationship between the real and the virtual body; and the
virtual body is often seen as a threatening independent agent or as a passive,
hologram-like image. The split is definitive. But in artificial reality systems
there is an immediate, existential relationship between the two bodies. The
virtual body is not our rebellious shadow - although Videoplace may sometimes
play with this idea. It is an extension of the physical body of the user. It is
also our representative in the artificial world, but a peculiar one. Instead of
the more customary situation wherein we select an agent to represent us in the
virtual world of the computer (the protagonist of a video game, for instance),
we become puppeteers directing ourselves as puppets.
Another difference between an artificial reality
system and the fantasies mentioned above lies in the fact that levitating
bodies and Doppelganger are believed to materialise in the same space in which
the physical body is located. Artificial reality, however, purports to
transport the virtual body to a parallel, alternative reality with its own
'natural laws'. It is, according to Krueger, a responsive environment. Ideally,
such an environment is 'smart', provided with some artificial intelligence It
doesn't just respond to external stimuli but acts on them in unpredictable
ways. Videoplace may tease or even 'mutilate' the virtual body on the screen.
Artificial reality thus clearly combats the idea of Al as necessarily embodied
in anthropomorphic creatures. It is 'spatialised intelligence', which may evoke
the 'Haunted Houses' of the early silent cinema
In most of the artificial reality installations the
immersiveness has been restricted by the fact that the installations do not
form complete wraparound surroundings around the user(s). Both the Videoplace
and the Mandala installations present a clear demarcation line between the real
and the artificial world. In concrete terms, this line is provided by the
visibility of the frame of the screen as in painting, photography and cinema -
and by the distance of the user from the screen. The refusal to build totally
immersive artificial realities is by no means a technical imperative. In
Krueger's case it is an ethical stand against 'isolating people' and alienating
them from 'the other activities that take place in a work environment'. (41)
Rushing in to the image
Commercial immersive spectacles, such as the popular
motion-simulator rides, often aim primarily at causing and offering out-of
the-ordinary and vertigo-type sensations that exceed customary spatio-temporal
experience. The sensation of extraordinary speed, achieved by the interplay
between synchronised multi sensory cues, such as the hydraulic moving seats and
the virtual movements on the screen, is a central element in the attractiveness
of a simulator ride. Equally important is the first person point-of-view.
Contrary to conventional narrative cinema, there is usually no exchange of
'looks'. (42) Everything is seen from a subjective camera position, identified
with the point-of-view of the spectator. There isn't even a lateral panning
camera movement, just the continuous high-speed motion into the image along the
depth axis. (43) The pleasure offered by such a simulator ride is normally also
related to the passivity of the experience; the audience surrenders itself
temporarily to the machine and, in a way, becomes 'encapsulated' in it. (44)
Interactive rides have, however, recently started appearing.
Related ideas about immersion - understood here as
'pre-programmed penetration into the image' have also been utilised in
computer-based art installations. In the context of interactivity, however, the
pre-programmed immersion incorporates the idea of user-control. The dizzying
rush into the 'depths' of the image is just one of the options of an
interactive system, triggered by the user; the immersion is always
'negotiated'. This is evident from the way immersion is treated in simulator
games The player of a Formula One game is given several options to control the
headlong rush down the virtual racetrack. For instance, the driving speed and
direction can be varied. After a crash the 'driver' can steer his/her car back
to the track. During certain limited moments s/he can just let go and enjoy the
sensation of virtual speed.
It is possible to identify a sub-genre of
interactive art installations utilising and investigating this subject
position, which I propose calling 'inverted direct address' This refers to the
fact that the active, controlling gaze addressing the system belongs to the
user. The sub-genre (briefly mentioned above) has been variously called 'movie
map', 'virtual voyaging' or 'surrogate travelling' and is best represented by
the artistic work of Jeffrey Shaw and Michael Naimark. San Francisco-based
Naimark actually participated in the group that produced the famous Aspen Movie
Map at MIT in 1978-79. Aspen Movie Map, a computer-controlled videodisc which
allowed the user to navigate an interactive representation of the city of
Aspen, Colorado, could be considered a major landmark in the development of
this sub-genre. But the preforms of virtual voyaging go even further back - to
the 1 9th century Panoramas, Victorian stereoscopes, 'phantom rides' of the
early silent cinema, professional 'flight trainers' and mechanical arcade
games. (45)
Virtual voyaging installations give the user the
experience of 'travelling' inside a virtual landscape via some kind of a
steering system. The virtual landscape can be a computer-generated model of a
city as in Jeffrey Shaw's The Legible City ( 1989-90), or it can be a
computer-controlled videodisc which contains a video reproduction of an actual
city, as in Aspen Movie Map or in Naimark's Golden Gate Movie Map (1987) or VBK
A Moviemap of Karlsruhe (1990-91) The interface device can be anything from a
joystick or a spaceball to an adapted surfing board (as in Peter Broadwell and
Rob Myers' Plasm: Above the Drome, 1991), a bicycle (as in The Legible City) or
even a professional hydraulic motion platform (Tamas Walizsky's The Forest,
1994). Virtual Reality installations, such as Matt Mullican's Five into One-2
(1991), enhance the virtual voyaging experience by placing the user 'inside'
the virtual landscape via a head-mounted display and a data-glove.
By uniting the first person vision, the virtual
mobility and the interactive control, the user-cum-virtual voyager could be
easily allocated unlimited 'mobile panavision' - the possibility of seeing
'everything' and of simultaneously going to 'all places'. It is highly
significant, though, that artists often choose to deliberately restrict this
freedom of movement. In Shaw's The Legible City the 'virtual camera' (the
point-of-view identified with the 'vision-movements' of the user) is 'locked'
onto the street-level. Although the user can look at the separate computerised
map at his/her side and get an overview of his/her current location, s/he can
never observe the virtual city from a bird's eye view. This decision is motivated
thematically: Shaw connects the idea of cycling in the city to the acts of
reading and writing (the city consists entirely of 'houses' made of 3D letters,
words and sentences). The act of cycling along the city streets is thus turned
into an act of reading and writing as well: by choosing her/his routes the user
simultaneously creates their own syntaxes, writes poetry with their feet (the
result could be called 'pedalpoems'). In a way s/he navigates inside a language
system creating enunciations which break with the conventions of ordinary
language; this may evoke Mallarme, Schwitters and the Joyce of Finnegans Wake,
perhaps even Cage. This re-organisation of language is made even more
intriguing by the fact that the user has been given the ability to penetrate
walls land thus break through words and even letters).
In Naimark's VBK -A Moviemap of Karlsruhe the user's
vision-movements are restricted to the tramline network of an actual city. (46)
This work investigates, as do most of Naimark's creations, the often subtle
differences between reality and its representations. A tram network is one of
the innumerable grids superimposed on reality. It presents a highly selective
and structured point-of-view which has been submitted to many different (political,
economical, cultural, historical, demographic) constraints. The transposition
of the tram system into an interactive navigation system adds its own
constraints and possibilities. The possibility of controlling both the movement
and speed affects the perceptual system. Interestingly, Naimark has also
included an option to speed up the motion of the 'virtual tram' until it
surpasses all verisimilitude: the user experiences a dizzying sensation of
racing wildly through a real-looking city. In a sense this solution re-enacts a
mode of experience already offered by turn-of-the-century 'phantom ride' films
and utilised since in different immersive applications (Cinerama in the 1950s,
for example). Phantom ride films were 'virtual train trips' shot from the front
of a moving train. (47) Two basic experiential variations were available for
the early cinema audiences: the 'virtual sightseeing tour' {with emphasis on
the landscapes and scenery) and a kind of 'virtual rollercoaster ride',
achieved by cranking the projector at a faster than normal speed.
The intention behind this parallel is not to negate
the innovations or distinctive features of interactive artworks. It is,
however, important to grasp that the range of applications offered by new
technologies is often a complex mixture of novelty and such subject positions
and modes of experience that have been activated earlier, in different
technological contexts. In a sense the virtual voyaging installations even
combine elements of the phantom ride with another tradition, the responsive and
tactile experiences offered by peep-show machines and other coin-op devices
from the late 19th century on. (48) Naimark has made this double lineage
explicit in his most recent installation See Banff! (also called the Banff Kinetoscope,
1994). By peering into the stereoscopic eyepiece of a wooden peepshow machine
and cranking a handle we activate series of video sequences about movement in
various sceneries. Although See Banff! is one of the manifestations of the
recent 'archaeological approach' in media art, the gesture cannot be deemed
nostalgic. The time-lapse video sequences are clearly a continuation of
Naimark's earlier studies about mapping real landscapes into conceptual grids;
the outer frame of the installation adds a historical and cultural dimension to
this avant-garde endeavour (with associations with tourism, home movies, the
relation between 'high' and 'low' culture, etc.).
Subverting white man's technology
If we look at the handful of virtual reality
artworks (in the narrow sense: works exploring the possibilities of
'computerised clothing', head-mounted displays, data-gloves, and such), we find
similar issues. (49) Here the movement of the user inside the virtual world is
usually de-coupled from a (virtual) technological prosthesis, and replaced with
the experience of having a virtual 'walking tour'. The idea of virtual reality
has been closely linked to the idea of a virtual panopticon: instead of the
restricted vision offered by the renaissance perspective (often enhanced by the
presence of the picture frame), we really get mobile panavision: the ability to
master a 360 degree panoramic view Not only can we see what is behind us: we
can also leave our fixed observation post and penetrate into the landscape. But
even this is not enough: we can also touch the virtual objects and manipulate
them, which adds a panhapticon to the panopticon.
Whether all this makes virtual reality the ultimate
fulfilment of the Renaissance perspectival system or a major break from it, is
open to debate. (50) It has, however, already become clear that the discursive
promises of virtual reality are often very far from the reality conditioned by
the actual state of the technology and its cultural and social weight. One of
the interesting aspects of VR environments created by artists is their attempt
both to offer a critical distance (purporting to establish an 'observation
post' somehow separated from the immersive environment, yet contained within
it) and to support the pleasure and strangeness of exploring a virtual
environment. Matt Mulican's Five Into One-2 (1991) invites the user to explore
five interconnected virtual worlds, impregnated by carefully orchestrated
colours, shapes and graphical symbols. In a way the work is a logical continuation
of Mullican's City Project (MOMA, New York, 1 989), his effort to create an
idiosyncratic, privately codified universe by various artistic means and
expressions (conceptually there is only a matter of degree between Mullican's
'traditional' room installations and the 'installations' he has created in
virtual space). (51) He invites the visitor to explore his private virtual
universe (even to enter some houses and open drawers), but he keeps its
symbolic dimension deliberately obscure (the colours, shapes and signs resonate
only in relation to Mulican's own 'system of the universe').
A radically different approach to virtual reality is
demonstrated by Inherent Rights, Vision Rights (1992), a VR-installation work
by native Canadian artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. (52) The visitor (usually
a white urban westerner) is immersed into a virtual 'spirit lodge', a ritual
environment belonging to Yuxweluptun's tribe. It is an enchanted world with
radically different values and concerns from those of most visitors The freedom
of movement is deliberately restricted and the graphics crude. When entering
the world, for example, one cannot back up to admire the carved 'wooden' gates
in their entirety. Why? Because the artist does not want them to look like 'white
man's postcards'. (53) Similarly, the artist wants the visitor to pay attention
to the fact that the moon is 'crying' (presumably as a reaction to the
eco-catastrophe threating the living conditions of the natives; this message is
supported by the subtle but rich soundtrack, superimposing the sounds of wild
animals on to the distant sounds of jetplanes crossing the sky).
These are ideologically as well as artistically
motivated choices. Why should a native artist adopt the high-tech standards set
by white (male) technocrats? It is a privilege for the visitor to be invited to
the virtual 'spirit lodge'. One must accept the terms; there is no room for
colonising attitudes here. An obvious parallel is the way in which certain
feminist artists - such as the Australian cyberfeminist group VNS Matrix- have
appropriated male dominated technology, yet refused to accept the slickness of
its aesthetics. In All New Gen (1994), for instance, VNS Matrix created a
deliberately 'perverse' reading of the world view behind Nintendo and
appropriated the corporate form of the video game for their own purposes. In
their 'Game Girl' version the game becomes a vehicle for cyberfeminist
ideology, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of 'Big Daddy
Mainframe'.
The fact that artists like Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
and VNS Matrix, who have different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, however
share an interest in subverting the 'white man's technology' might eventually
help to break the technological fetishism surrounding virtual reality and
interactive media. From a fashion-surfing artificial void, a
military-industrial training-ground or a commercial high tech playland,
interactive media would gradually emerge as a philosophical and poetic universe
with strong ethical and ideological connotations.
The hype and the promise
Brenda Laurel has addressed the hype surrounding
concepts like virtual reality: 'If a representation of the surface of the moon
lets you walk around and look at things, then it probably feels extremely
interactive, whether your virtual excursion has any consequences or not.' (54)
'Unrestricted movement' through virtual space may be a technical goal or a
cyberpunk dream, but it isn't necessarily an artistic aim. The same is true of
'total immersion'; if one does not look merely for an extatic moment in an
'artificial paradise', the fact of 'being inside' would add relatively little
to the achievements of a work like Legible City. (55) Developing more and more
immediate interfaces and increasingly intelligent agents may be important goals
for research and development, but they are not necessarily the primary goals
for an interactive art practice . (56) In a world where the development of new
technology has been subordinated to the interests of the market, the military
and governments, the wonderful promise and 'democratising' potential of
interactive technology may be a camouflage for something else.
In industrial-commercial academic mass gatherings,
like Siggraph, the discourse on digital technology is usually dramatically
devoid of considerations of its social, cultural and ideological implications.
Sheer technological positivism tries to meet the expections of the market. It
would be naive to assume that the massive exposure interactivity is currently
receiving in the mass media, or even the gradual saturation of society with
interactive gadgets, would suffice to lead us into an interactive paradise.
Even the fates of interactive technology are conditioned by powerful and
wide-ranging discourses in contemporary society. And the majority are
'preservative' rather than radically innovative. There are enough thoroughly
probed ideological and economic schemes to accomodate even 'breakthroughs' like
interactive media: the interactive shopping malls mentioned above are but one
example.
The 1950s modernist and rationalist discourses about
the imminent blessings of automation were, in their own context, not so very
different. An advertisement for the Bendix washing machine from 1946 announced
the complete replacement of physical work by elegantly designed fully automated
machines: 'It's wonderful! - how my BENDIX does all the work of washing!
Because it washes, rinses, damp-dries -even cleans itself, empties and shuts
off - all automatically!' (57) Ellen Lupton has demonstrated that the real
motive was not the elimination of work but its displacement: instead of washing
clothes by hand the housewife could now concentrate better on other forms of
domestic work. (58) The prevailing conservative family ideology remained
intact, was perhaps even reinforced. Perry Hoberman's interactive installation
Faraday's Garden (1990) deals exactly with this issue, the cultural ambivalence
of automation. Hoberman's 'machine garden', consisting of obsolete household
utensils and domestic gadgets (actually operated by sensors under the visitors'
feet), is useless and weird, but also disconcerting these 'semi-living
creatures' are survivors of another technological era, chaotic messengers of a
defunct ideology.
What has been discussed above should not be read as
saying that interactivity is just another virtual creation, a discursive
formation grafted by powerful media machineries and utterly devoid of any
chances for real development and influence On the contrary, interactive
technology bears great promise. It could well subvert prevailing media
practices and supplant them with more versatile, user-friendly and 'democratic'
forms. However, addressing only hardware development, interface design and
sales curves will not be sufficient to achieve this goal. Digital technology
has to be valued in a wider context which embraces not only the full spectrum
of contemporary social and ideological practices, but history as well. This
article has tried to demonstrate - albeit through very selective sampling -
that interactive artworks can have a seminal role in this process by
maintaining a continuous metacommentary about interactivity. This is not an
easy task. As Andy Darley has put it so succinctly: 'The possibilities of
egalitarian, more democratic, constructive forms offering new kinds of
interaction, knowledge and understanding may well be enhanced by the novel
capabilities of the new technologies They will, more than ever before, have to
be struggled for.' (59)
Notes
1. This article is based on an earlier essay, 'Commentaries
on Metacommentaries on Interactivity', originally published in Cultural
Diversity in the Global Village. The Third International Symposium on
Electronic Art, Sydney, Australia 9-13 November 1992, ed. Alessio Cavallaro et
al (Sydney: The Australian Network for Art and Technology, 1992l, pp. 93-98. A
somewhat modified version appeared (in English and German) in the European
Media Art Festival Osnabruck 1993, catalogue, eds. Eckhard Diesing and Ralf
Sausmikat (Osnabruck: EMAF 1993), pp. 251 -72.
2. Eric Davis, 'TV's Fascinating, Frightening
Future', The Utne Reader 48 (July/August 1990), pp. 86-87 (cit. William Boddy,
'Electronic Vision: Genealogies and Gendered Technologies' a paper presented at
the Finnish Society of Cinema Studies Conference, Helsinki, January 1993,
unpublished).
3. Roy Rada's Interactive Media (New York: Springer,
1995; is o recent attempt at creating/maintaining that conceptual integrity.
4. This subject position is in the making
practically everywhere - in interactive science museums, video-game arcades,
theme parks and training simulators, but also in all kinds of daily
interactions from using an automated teller machine to stroking the keys of a
personal computer in the home or the office. And to a certain extent the ground
for this has been prepared by the rather limited interactive potential of the
VCR and the remote-controlled television set; they allow us to interrupt and -
in the case of the VCR - also to store and repeat the programme flow.
5. This concept has been used from a
'constructionist' point of view by Seymour Papert in Mindstorms. Children,
Computers, and Powerful Ideas (Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press,1980).
Papert refers to a computerised world which a child
constructs and explores by means of the LOGO programming
language. The concept may take on a more sinister meaning, referring to
solipsistic and alienated 'life in the media cloud'; see Volker Grassmuck,
'Otaku. Japanese Kids Colonize the Realm of Information and Media', Mediamatic,
5, no. 4 (Winter 1991), pp. 197-220.
6. This doesn't imply, however, that the subject
position constituted by the cinema or by broadcast television would be totally
passive. Different feed-back modes - real and imaginary - are even encouraged.
What is more, the spectator as a subject is not absolutely tied to this
position, rather, s/he has a wide variety of different ways to react, from
making 'preferred' readings to constructing 'counter-readings'.
7. Andy Lippman, interviewed by Stewart Brand, The
Media Lab. Inventing the Future at M.l.T. (NewYork: Penguin Books,1988), p. 46.
8. Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre (Reading,
Mass.: Addison-Wesley,1991).
9. Clark et al., cit. Laurel, op.cit.,3.
10. Probably the most perceptive analysis about the
modes of the mental exchange activated in the human-computer relationship
remains Sherry Turkle's The Second Self Computers and the Human Spirit (London:
Granada,1984).
11. See, for instance, Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth
Discontinuitv. The Co-evolution of Humans and Machines (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1993); and Raymond Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent
Machines (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,1990).
12. Simon Penny, 'The Intelligent Machine as
Anti-Christ', SISEA Proceedings. ed. Wim van der Plas (Groningen: SISEA,1991),
pp. 205-212.
13. See Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire. Design and
Society 1750-1980 (London: Thames & Hudson 1986), pp. 207-221; Ellen Lupton,
Mechanical Brides. Women and Machines from Home to Office (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1993). For a discussion of automation, see Sir Leon
Bagrit, The Age of Automation. The BBC Reith Lectures 1964 (New York: Mentor
Books, 1965).
14. See Matthew Geller and Reese Williams, eds.,
From Receiver to Remote Control: The TV Set (New York: The New Museum of
Contemporary Art, 1990). The discourse on automation and interaction is, of
course, much more complex. To mention just one example, arcade games are called
in German Spielautomaten, yet their mode of interaction - clearly a
conversational relationship - is more related to the idea of interactivity.
15. Margaret Morse, 'Virtual War. The Gulf War,
Television and Virtual Reality', published only in Finnish in my anthology
Virtucalisuuden arkeologia ['The Archeology of Virtuality'] (Rovaniemi: The
University of Lapland Press,1995), p. 291.
16. For a discussion of this background, see
particularly Frank Popper's Art, action et participation: L'artiste et la
creativite aujourd'hui(Paris:EditionsKlincksieck,1985 [1980]), and Art in the
Electronic Age (London: Thames and Hudson,1993). See also Cynthia Gaodman,
Digital Visions. Computers and Art (New York & Syracuse: Abrams &
Everson Museum of Art,1987); Frank J. Malina, ed., Kinetic Art: Theory and
Practice. Selections from the Journal Leonardo (New York: Dover Publications,
1974), and Regina Cornwall, 'Interactive Art. Touching the "Body in the
Mind"', Discourse,14, no.2 (Spring 1992), pp. 203-221.
17. The recent 'mediatisation of interactivity' is
reflected in the launching of such journals as Interactive Week lin 1994) and
Interactivity (in 1995), and in books like Tim Morrison's huge compendium The
Magic of Interactive Entertainment (Indianapolis: SAMS Publishing,1994, 2nd
ed.1995).
18. See my article "'It is interactive, but is
it art?"', Computer Graphics Visual Proceedings: Annual Conference Series,
1993, edited by Thomas E. Linehan, NewYork: ACM Siggraph 1993,133-335.
19. William Bricken's statement, 'The 3D sound stuff
at NASA is art. Myron (Krueger's) work is art. The code in the VEOS [Virtual
Environment Authoring System] is art -that is, some coding style considerations
are motivated by aesthetics', doesn't really help us out of this dilemma.
Neither does Brenda Laurel's article, 'Artistic Frontiers in Virtual Reality',
Siggraph ' 92 Visual Proceedings, ed. John Grimes and Gray Lorig (New York: ACM
Siggraph, 1992), p. 60, from which the quotation is taken. The corporate people
are far too eager to join the artists' ranks, with far too few credits, but at
the same time I don't see any art in Laurel's and Rachel Strickland's much
hyped VR-piece Placeholder (prod. The Banff Center for the Arts, 1993).
20. I have dealt with this aspect at length in my
essay 'Time Machines in the Gallery: An Archeological Approach in Media Art' in
Immersed in Technology. Art and Virtual Environments, eds. Mary Anne Moser and
Douglas McLeod (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, forthcoming 1995).
21. See, for example, Bill Nichols, Ideology and the
Image (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp.182-207; and Margaret
Morse, 'Talk, Talk, Talk -The Space of Discourse in Television', Screen, 26,
no. 2 (March-April, 1985), pp. 3-15.
22. Malcolm Le Grice, 'Kismet, Protagony and the Zap
Splat. Some Theoretical Concepts for Interactive Cinema', CAD FORUM. Zbarnik
radava/Conference Proceedings, 4th International Conference on Development and
Use of Computer Systems, 12-16 May, 1993, Zagreb, Croatia (Zagreb: CAD sekcija
Saveza drustava arhitekata Hrvatske,1993), p.244.
23. David Tafler 'Beyond Narrative: Notes Toward a
Theory of Interactive Cinema', Millenium Film Journal, nos. 20-21 (Fall-Winter,
1988-89), pp. 122-123.
24. Andy Lippma n, interviewed by Stewart Brand, The
Media Lab. Inventing the Future at M.l.T., op.cit., p. 46.
25. 1 am referring to a demonstration of
Time-Warner's experimental interactive TV system, Full Service Network
(Orlando, Florida) by Robert Zitter (Home Box Office) at Imagina, Monte Carlo, February
1994. An example of an interactive on-line shopping mall is the American
2Market (launched in 1994) which is available both as a CD-ROM and as an
on-line service, as part of the repertoire of America Online.
26. The CD-ROM artwork BAR-MIN-SKI: Consumer Product
by Bill Barminski, Webster Lewin and Jerry Hesketh (De-Lux'O Consumer
Productions, USA 1994) has already appropriated the form of the interactive
shopping mall as the setting for the weird pseudo-consumerist art world of Bill
Barminski.
27. Tim Oren et al, 'Guides: Characterizing the
Interface' in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, ed. Brenda Laurel
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990), pp.367-381.
28. For an overview of the work on computerised
agents, see the special issue 'Intelligent Agents' of Communications of the
ACM, 37, no. 7 (July 1994). Maes' team has made its research public in the form
of entertaining interactive installations (named ALIVq at Siggraph 1993 and
1995. HOMR (formerly Ringo), an 'intelligent' music recommendation system
functioning on the Internet, was also designed by this group.
29. Earlier, in 1987, Hershman had written: 'Because
direct response is discouraged and repressed, the television audience harbors
subliminal feelings of impotence that all too often surface as undirected
nihilistic rage.' To Jack Burnham's statement, 'Art is moving towards coitus,
towards sex, which is what we wanted all along', she replied: 'One might more
accurately suggest that what we have really wanted all along was a connection,
a means by which to actively respond and communicote: a diolog with our
environment and our community' (Lynn Hershman, 'Bodyheat: interactive media and
human response', High Performance, 10, no.1, issue 37 (1987), p. 45).
30. Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (New York:
Random House,1974), p.192.
31. See my essay 'Time Machines in the Gallery: An
Archeological Approach in Media Art', op. cit.
32. Richard A. Bolt, The Human Interface. Where
People and Computers Meet (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press), p. 72.
33. When the work was premiered at the Interactive
Media Festival in Los Angeles, June 1995, Feingold went even further: he
experimented by displacing one user's speech to the lips of a robot controlled
by someone else, adding to the confusion. The fact that the installation broke
down several times must, however, be considered accidental (even though it was
in keeping with the overall work).
34. This raised a storm among the more
traditionally-minded documentary film-people at the 37th Annual Robert Flaherty
Seminar in the summer of 1991. See Laura U. Marks' review of the event in
Aherimage, Vol.19, No 4 (November 1991), p.4.
35. Nick Wingfield, 'Ride for your Life', New Media,
July 1995,1, p.11.
36. Michael Naimark, 'Realness and Interactivity' in
The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, ed. Brenda Laurel (Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1990), pp.456-457. One of the most successful audience
participation pieces I have experienced didn't involve computers at all: at the
'Les arts etonnants' show at Tourcoing, Francein October 1991, artist Alain
Fleicher made the audience reflect on the screen, by handheld mirrors, a movie
which was projected towards them. The result was a constantly forming and deforming
'pixel-image'.
37. Chip Morning star and F. Randall Farmer, 'The
Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat' in
Cyberspace: FirstSteps, ed. Michael Benedikt
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), pp.273-301.
38. Grahame Weinbren, 'An Interactive Cinema: Time,
Tense and Some Models', New Observations, no. 71 (October-November 1989), p.
14.
39. My impressions on Sonata are based on sessions
in the artist's studio at New York City, August 6, 1992 and at the Berlin Film
Festival, February 1993, where the piece was officially premiered.
40. The concept 'artificial reality' was coined by
Myron Krueger in his book Artificial Reality (Addison-Wesley, 1983).
Subsequently, the kind of idea it refers to has also been called 'non-immersive
virtual reality'. Krueger himself has pointedly defended the virtues of his
system against totally immersive' systems, such as the ones experienced in a
head-mounted display.
41. Myron W. Krueger, 'Videoplace and the Interface
of the future' in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, op. cit., p.420;
Myron W. Krueger, Artificial Reality II (Reading, Mass.: Addison- Wesley,1991).
42. Other kinds of narrative figures have recently
been incorporated in ride films, as well. Journey to Technopia, produced by
Boss Films Studios for the Taejon Expo (1993) contains sequences where the
protagonists talk to the participants in direct address. The ride with its
different pre-shaws has a developed narrative framework.See my 'Phantom Train
to Technopi' in ISEA '94-the Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Art
Catalogue, ed. Minna Tarkka (Helsinki: University of Art and Design,1994), pp.
206-208.
43. For an intelligent discussion of this figure,
mostly in the context of computer graphics and computerised special effects on
television, see Margaret Morse, 'Television Graphics and the Body: Words on the
Move', paper for 'Television and the Body', Society for Cinema Studies,
Montreal 1987 (unpublished manuscript).
44. See my 'Encapsulated Bodies in Motion.
Simulators and the Quest for Total Immersion' in Critical Issues in Electronic
Media, ed. Simon Penny (New York: SUNY Press, 1995), pp.159-186.
45. For a discussion of these precedents, see my
'Armchair Traveller on the Ford of Jordan. The Home, the Stereoscope and the
Virtual Voyager', Mediamatic,8, no. 2-3 (Spring 1995), pp.13-23.
46. I have been told that there is a cameo
appearance by the artist himself (a la Hitchcock) somewhere along the route -
just a hint for future virtual voyagers -but I haven't noticed Mr. Naimark on
the screen.
47. The basic text on phantom rides and their
further development into a spectacle called Hale's Tours 11904) is Raymond
Fielding, 'Hale's Tours. Ultrarealism in the Pre-1910 Motion Picture' in Film
Before Griffith, ed. John L. Fell (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983), pp.116-130.
48. For a discussion of the history of these
machines, see Jean-Claude Baudot, ARCADM. Slot Machines of Europe and America,
translated by Anthony Carter (Tunbridge Wells: Costello, 1988), and Bill Kurtz,
Slot Machines and Coin-op Games. A Collector's Guide to One-armed Bandits and
Amusement Machines (London: The Apple Press,1991).
49. In addition to the VR installations dealt with
in the text, it is also pertinent to note the following: Monica Fleischmann's
and Wolfgang Strauss' Home of the Brain (1992) and Nicole Stenger's Angels
(19921. Due to technical problems, extremely limited audiences have been able
to experience these personally. The same goes for Mullican's Five into One-2,
which has mostly been shown as a video tape, although the writer was lucky
enough to navigate this work with a VPL head-mounted display during its
premiere at Les arts etonnants Le Fresnoy Tourcoing, France, 1991. I tried Home
of the Brain at Ars Electronica, Linz, in 1993. My impressions about Stenger's
Angels are based on a 7:33 minute demo-tape documentation in ACM Siggraph Video
Review, no. 83 (1992), and on an article by Louis M. Brill, 'Paradise Found in
VR Movie', Siggraph' 92 Show Daily, July 29, 1992.
50. See Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer.
On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991); Martin Jay, 'Scopic Regimes of Modernity' in Vision and Visuality, Dia
Art Foundation Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No.2, ed. Hal Foster
(Seattle: Bay Press,1988), pp.2-23.
51. Michael Tarentina, 'The Body as Camera', Les
arts etonnants, Catalogue (Tourcoing: Le Fresnoy, 1991), pp. 1 8-22.
52. This work was created as part of the
'Bioapparatus' project at The Banff Center for the Arts, Alberta, Canada, 1992.
53. According to Douglas McLeod, producer of the
work, and communicated to me during my stay in Banff in October 1992, where I
also tried the piece with a HMD for the first time. Subsequently, it has also
been shown in a specially constructed interactive peep-show device (for
example, at the Europeon Media Art Festival Osnabruck, 1993). See my 'Rompre le
charme de la "technologie de l'homme blanc"/Breaking the spell of
"white man's technology"' in Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: 'Inherent
Rights, Vision Rights'. Installation de realite virtuelle, peintures et dessins
(Ambassade du Canada & ART-EL, Paris 1993), pp. 6-9.
54. Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre, op. cit.,
p. 21.
55. Legible Citywas created with support from Dutch
public cultural funds while Shaw was an independent artist. Much of Shaw's work
has enjoyed support from European ministries of culture and other institutions.
He has not had to work under commercial and financial pressure or constraints.
The works Shaw has created in the 1990s, as director of the Institute for
Visual Media at ZKM, Karlsruhe, continue to be interesting, but they lack some
of the integrity and accomplishment of the earlier work. Whether this is
related to the change in his role is open to debate.
56. Of course, interactive artists may contribute
significantly to the development of technology, including its inner
architecture, software development and interface design. The artificial life installations
by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, currently resident artists at the
ATR research laborotories in Kyoto, Japan, are an impressive example of this.
57. Reproduced in Ellen Lupton, Mechanical Brides.
Women and Machines from Home to Office (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1993), p. 19. Adrian Forty has analysed a 1950s publicity photograph
depicting a housewife in a party dress standing by her electric cooker as it
automatically prepares a complete meal. There are no signs of work anywhere. As
Forty comments: '[n]o mess, no sweat -the cooker, it seems, produces meals of
its own.'(Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire, op. cit., p. 211.)
58. Lupton, ibid.
59. Andy Darley, 'Big Screen Little Screen: The
Archaelogy of Technology', Ten8, 2, no. 2 (Autumn 1991), p. 87.