Interactive Ideology

[These are simply some notes prompted by David Rokeby's piece.]

It has become a commonplace assumption that when something is interactive, it is not only more democratic, but is also "open" as part of a general "questioning of authorship." Both these interpretations of interactivity may be not only inaccurate, bu specifically misleading, providing a mask for the reassertion of traditional modes of working while creating an illusion of the opposite.
Rokeby writes "The question of domination raises an important issue. For many people, interaction has come to mean 'control'. People look to interactive technology for 'empowerment', and such technologies can certainly give the interactor a strong sense of power. This is clearly the attraction of video games. In these games, the mirror transforms the interactor's gestures largely by amplification, but what is actually offered is the amplification of a gesture within a void, a domination of nothingness, the illusion of power. In particular, this is a fantasy of power bereft of responsibility. In the recent Gulf War, the video-game fantasy of power was reconnected to the power of actual armaments. In the process, the sense of responsibility was lost; the personal acountability of the pilots was cleverly amputated, dissolved by the interface.

"Interaction is about encounter rather than control. The interactive artist must counter the video-game-induced expectations that the interactor often brings to interaction. Obliqueness and irony within the transformations and the coexistence of many different variables of control within the interactive media provide for a richer, though perhaps less ego-gratifying experience." [1] It is unclear how the set of concerns with ironically divesting his audience of the sense of "control" that typically accompanies interactivity can be seen as other than an assertion of control by forces extrinsic to the audience--in this case, the author via an automated system. Expecting his audience to accept this passively is a basically authoritarian stance.

At the same time, we are expected to believe that interaction offers a breach to the apparent control and dominance of authorship. There is a paradox here that becomes evident at the level of praxis.

The big question we should be asking of all these "interactive" systems is in what way do they teach us to accommodate the status quo? Interactive systems are inherently domineering--they allow certain actions, disallow others and teach their users into positions of accommodation and adaptation to the parameters of a human-designed system that does not allow variances or enable most alternative uses. The image of artist within such a system is demiurgic (demagoguery) assertign its dominance while denying its presence.

Quotes to get us started

Quotes from "Transforming Mirrors", a text by Canadian artist David Rokeby (emphasis mine):

"Itsuo Sakane, the Japanese journalist and curator, suggests that interactive art is simply art that involves the participation of the viewer. But he goes on to remark "all arts can be called interactive in a deep sense if we consider viewing and interpreting a work of art as a kind of participation," an echo of Marcel Duchamp's famous declaration, "The spectator makes the picture.""

"McLuhan often referred to technologies as 'extensions of man'. But in fully interactive technologies, the flow of information goes both ways; the apparati become more like permeable membranes."

"Television expands the reach of our vision, while at the same time, filtering the content. We trade the subjectivity of our personal point of view for centrally collected and broadcasted images and information. Interactive media have the power to likewise expand the reach of our actions and decisions. We trade subjectivity for participation and the illusion of control; our control may appear absolute, but the domain of that control is externally defined. We are engaged, but exercise no power over the filtering language of interaction embedded in the interface. Rather than broadcasting content, interactive media have the power to broadcast modes of perception and action."

From this text, some questions arise for me:

How can VJs cultivate this "permeable membrane" between art and audience?

At what level do VJs give up this notion of control over material, and how can the audience figure into this?

If "the spectator makes the picture", how is this transformed in a context of live, dynamic creation?


(Read the full paper by Rokeby.)