MDE 2 Research Exploration

DE-VIEWER IN USE. [Online image]. http://www.artcom.de/index.php?option=com_acprojects&page=5&id=24&Itemid=144&details=&imageRequestToggle=0&lang=en&selectedimage=

(5 November 2008)

Figure 5

TOMBA, U. Photograph of ‘Portrait of a Young Boy holding a Child’s Drawing’ by Giovanni Francesco Caroto. [Online image].

http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/renaissance_faces/vett_ngl_08_09.htm. (26 Dec 2008)

Figure 6

CONCEALED HARDWARE OF DE-VIEWER. [Online image]. http://www.artcom.de/index.php?option=com_acprojects&page=5&id=24&Itemid=144&details=&imageRequestToggle=0&lang=en&selectedimage=2_pro_zerseher/min_07_zerseher.jpg (6 November 2008)

Design By Practice MDE2 Research Essay

Challenging the emphasis on interactivity In New Media Design

Part one

Introduction – what happened to ‘Multimedia’?

Interactivity is a wonderful thing, allowing us to communicate with a loved one, swim in the ocean, or merely smell a flower.

Interactivity in digital media is also a wonderful thing, allowing us to pay our bills, shop for goods, learn a new language, create graphics or animation with creative software packages, or find long lost friends via networking websites.

Less wonderful is the apparently forced interactivity that is permeating the digital design world. Specifically, and quite troubling, is the increasingly prevalent notion that a piece of new media design must be interactive in order for it to have any credibility. The term ‘interactivity’ in this discussion will mean ‘to change or influence the result or outcome’, in relation to design, rather than ‘interacting’ with a chair by sitting in it.

‘Interactive media’ is the term that has replaced ‘multimedia’ in the creative digital world, for example at the University Of Wales, Newport, the ‘Multimedia BA(Hons)’ degree has recently changed to ‘Interactive Media BA(Hons) the relatively new career of ‘multimedia designer’ has been replaced by the term ‘interactive media designer’.

This seemingly irrelevant title change appears to be indicative of a rather large shift in the digital design industry. At present there is considerable emphasis on a piece of digital design work being ‘interactive’, the message coming from both academia and the design community appears to be that a piece of work is not valid unless the user influences the outcome or end result, or at the very least is in control. Of course, certain applications will only function effectively through interactivity, for example, a website or DVD-ROM must, by it’s nature be driven by user navigation, and so we can logically reason that interactivity is perfectly acceptable in relation to these products.

Our well off, consumerist society is currently provided with a substantial amount of technology, items such as home computers, game consoles, MP3 players, satellite and cable television and the like. All of these devices have, over the years, familiarised us with the operation of the digital interface. A natural result of this slow creep of technology into the home is that we are increasingly reliant on the digital interface to interact and control our household devices.

This seemingly ubiquitous interactive technology appears to be acclimatising us to the notion that we are entitled to wield control over all media we come into contact with, resulting in the possibly detrimental over use of interactivity for it’s own sake.

Early Interactive applications – Empowering the user

The development of interactive computer graphics is arguably one of the most important developments in the computer industry. The Graphical Use Interface, or GUI has become the bridge between computer scientist and home user. It seems completely natural and obvious that today's computer user should interact with the computer through the use of a 'desktop and icon' (fig.1) system in order to open applications and navigate software packages. For example, when using a graphics package such as 'Adobe Photoshop', one selects parameters such as brush type, text, or colours by mouse clicking on an icon to set the desired values (fig.2). This way of interfacing with computers is relatively recent, and enabled computer technologies to permeate the average home and be operated by the non-programmer as well as professionals. In the infancy of the computing industry the machine's calculations were spewed out on reams of paper by a tele-type printer to be pored over by technicians. This was not good enough for the early pioneers of interactivity and computing.

Figure 1 MAC OSX TIGER GUI

Figure 2 Adobe Photoshop GUI.

Douglas Engelbart’s important contribution

In 1950 a young electrical engineer named Douglas Engelbart (fig.3) was hit by a flash of inspiration while driving to work. Engelbart, true visionary that he was, realised that mankind was creating ever more complex technological problems in the race to achieve all that science had led us to believe that we deserved. It must be remembered that this was smack in the middle of what is now referred to as the 'short twentieth century' (Hobsbawm, 1995, p. 10), the period between the first world war and the early 1990s that saw the huge technological surge which ushered in a climate of consumerism on a grand scale – radio, television, commercial air travel, motorcars, dishwashers etc. were transforming the home and workplace. This post-war technological land-rush was encouraging people like Engelbart to ponder the role of the human users of this new equipment, and concluded that in order for more people to use computers effectively, the old paper printout had to go, and in a prime example of enabling and converging technologies, he reasoned that the recently developed cathode ray tube television screen would serve as an excellent display device. The main point at the core of this idea is that if one can find ways of using audiovisual media to represent computational capabilities, one can then devote valuable time to the important task of problem-solving and the development and sharing of ideas. This revolutionary idea was accompanied by Engelbart’s development of the 'mouse', (which incidentally, celebrated it’s fortieth anniversary in December 2008), as a pointing device, and these two separate, but converging technologies signalled the complete overhaul of the human-computer-interface. Although crude, and by no means immediate in development, these ideas led directly to the move towards navigating a graphical environment, the change from typing code to using gestural input as a command language was revolutionary, heralding the use of a natural physical gesture, that of pointing and selecting, to operate computers. Engelbart's brainwave on the drive to work that morning in 1950 led directly to our current ability to easily use the aforementioned software packages and desktop systems of today, and is leading to the possible future use of gestural input devices, such as the wireless glove and finger systems, to the recent development of the Nintendo Wii games console, and revolutionary table-top motion sensitive interfaces currently in development by Microsoft, all of which mark the first steps of interacting with, and manipulation of computer generated environments.

Figure 3 Douglas Engelbart

Part two

The media and viewer interactivity power struggle

These events and developments of the last fifty years have led us to the exciting position that we find ourselves in today. Currently, microchip processing power doubles every eighteen months, this startling exponential growth in computer processing, known as Moore's Law, means that by the year 2020, a microchip with today's capabilities will be disposable, at a cost of only one penny. This in turn will lead to 'ubiquitous/invisible computing', a theory which speculates that computers will be all around us and contained in almost everything we come into contact with, so-called smart-clothes, and intelligent homes that many believe will monitor our well-being and entertain us, until the day that humans are no longer required to interact with any technology at all, as the technology will make it’s own ‘decisions’ based upon received data, thus eliminating any intentional, conscious input from the user, however, this is merely popular speculation and therefore a discussion for another time.

One possibly negative aspect of all this empowering is that we have become very comfortable with having control over the media that we use everyday. Influencing video games, websites and suchlike has led us to believe that we should have the right to influence the outcome of all our media and entertainment.

Interactive television run riot

Television viewers today are capable of watching their favorite programs when they please, pausing live shows and storing programs and such like. No longer at the mercy of the schedulers, the viewer is now in control of television, and most would agree that to be a desirable change. This gradual power shift began with the introduction of VCR’s in the 1980’s which allowed people to enjoy movies and recorded shows to be viewed at their convenience, the days of rushing home to see a popular television show, as we might have done in the 1960’s and 1970’s were long gone. The next step in viewer empowerment was the relatively cheap and simple to produce reality TV show which quickly led to the audience phone vote type show, such as ‘Big Brother’, ‘X Factor’, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ and any of the so-called ‘dumbed down’ Saturday night entertainment’ shows. The point of this apparently irrelevant amble down memory lane is that it appears to highlight a disturbing trend in the way that we as a culture have begun using entertainment media. It may be too early to tell at the moment, but it seems to be true that television viewers have grown accustomed to influencing the outcome of programs directly, starting with the innocent phone voting shows a few years ago. As a result, the public appears to have learned to treat television as if it is one huge interactive experience in which they believe they have the right to dictate everything that happens on screen. A recent incident on a BBC radio 2 show, in which two of the UK’s leading entertainers were perceived to have offended a much loved and respected elderly actor, has shown how the public have been ‘enabled’ or ‘empowered’ to effectively ‘vote off’ the entertainers in question, resulting in several of the most popular BBC TV and radio shows being postponed or cancelled altogether, also the BBC has instigated new guidelines for the broadcast of ‘satirical humour’ shows. (Brooker, 2008.) Finally, with one of the presenters resigning from the BBC and the other being suspended without pay at an estimated cost of 1.5 million pounds, this is arguably interactivity run wild. This incident may seem unimportant within the context of interactivity in digital media, but it is, in fact, a genuinely saddening example of what can happen when the public is lead to believe that they can influence everything they experience. It is exactly this development that we must attempt to challenge and re evaluate, this is interactive television on a grand scale, and indicative of the march towards ubiquitous interactivity within the media, and the general public’s perceived ‘right’ to influence everything.

Part three

A case study - The De-Viewer

Let us look further at the phenomena of user influence in the art and design world. ‘De-Viewer’ (fig.4) is a self-commissioned piece of interactive installation art, created by Joachim Sauter and Dirk Lusebrink in 1992. The piece appears to be an ordinary, framed painting called ‘Portrait of a Boy with a child’s drawing in his hand’ (ca. 1515) (fig.5) by Giovanni Francesco Caroto (1480-1555), as the artists themselves explain:

A framed picture is hanging on the wall of a gallery or museum. On closer inspection the visitor notices that the picture changes at the precise spot where he fixes his gaze.

We developed the “De-Viewer” with the provocative intention of encouraging interaction as a prime ingredient of new media. Where it used to be the “Old Master” who left his stamp on the visitor’s consciousness, now it is the visitor himself who is in a position to alter the work of art.

Our motivation for this project was the tendency of people, right up to the early 1990s, to regard the computer primarily as a tool and not as a medium. It was almost as if the painter was simply exchanging his brush for the mouse. This was art with computers, not yet the beginning of computer art.

The picture we have used is Francesco Caroto’s “Boy with a child-drawing in his hand” – the art world’s first known depiction of a child’s drawing – an appropriate metaphor for the level of sophistication of computer art at the time. (Sauter and Lusebrink, 1992)

Figure 4 De-Viewer in use

Figure 5 Portrait of a Boy with a child’s drawing in his hand

The De-Viewer can be seen functioning within an exhibition environment online at www.artcom.de. In the commentary that accompanies the short film it is stated that:

Through the confrontation and fusion of the traditional arts and new media technologies, this interactive installation attempts to democratise the dialogue between art and it’s audience. Whereas, in the past an old master might leave an impression on the mind of the passive onlooker, now the onlooker can leave an impression on the old master.

If no one looks at the picture for thirty seconds it reverts to it’s original state after first saving and storing the new user created image to hard disc. (Sauter, Lusebrink, 1992)

On deeper examination one could draw the conclusion that this is nothing more than meaningless ‘design speak’. The phrase ‘democratise the dialogue between art and it’s audience’ may not be sufficient an explanation inasmuch as most of us would recognise this as jargon, simply meaning to alter the way in which we might perceive the artwork, possibly intending to reduce the passivity of the viewer. It could be argued that this type of justifying statement actually alienates a potential audience and propagates the notion that art, design, and particularly installation pieces can be pretentious. Moreover, it is just this passivity that enables the traditional painter to convey his intended vision or meaning. This use of language is, however more of an argument about semantics, the main point here is that the viewer would be able to achieve the same end result by pouring paint thinner on a real painting, this would truly democratise the dialogue between art and it’s audience and would certainly leave an impression on the old master, of course, this act would be considered vandalism, but is this not what is happening when one interacts with de-viewer? The temporary, digital vandalism of an existing artwork carried out and encouraged by people who did not create the original painting. The context and requirements are changed (fig.6) but vandalism none the less.

Figure 6 Concealed hardware of De-Viewer

So who or what has decided that the viewer has any right to leave such an impression, to change the appearance of a piece of art at all? Certainly not Francesco Caroto, the creator of the original painting. To offer a subjective, personal opinion, I believe this piece is more effective as a deconstruction of the individual relationship between design in general and observer, which is to say that the more one observes part of the painting, the less observable it becomes, an ironic metaphor for the concept that the more one attempts to ‘see’ or understand art, the more elusive it becomes. I believe this explanation would provide ‘valid interactivity’, but this does not appear to be the message supporting ‘De-Viewer’. Realistically however, even this opinion is questionable as it ultimately becomes as meaningless as the original explanation.

Conclusion

We must challenge and possibly re evaluate this propensity for the over use of interactivity, or at the very least realise that it is part of the zeitgeist and understand that the practice of design is ever evolving. Never forgetting that art-forms such as film, literature, painting and theatre have stood the test of time without the need for the viewer to change the outcome, interactivity may well be regarded as passé in a few years (or even months, such is the rapidity of change in the digital world). For example, if in the highly influential, (but by no means original), Wachowski brothers’ movie The Matrix (1999), Keanu Reeve’s character of Thomas Anderson, AKA Neo, was forced through viewer interactivity to take the blue pill and return home ignorant of his potential, it would have made for a rather disappointing, not to mention short, story

Clearly, interactivity is a fine thing, allowing users to be immersed in a digital experience, whether for fun, business or both. It is vital to understand however, that just because a piece of work has interactive functionality, it does not necessarily mean that it is superior to any other type of work. A piece of design may well benefit from a strong linear narrative, an artist or designer should be allowed to have a message that he or she needs to impart to a passive audience without feeling that their work will be perceived as somehow inferior or old fashioned. As with any design or artwork, the audience is free to approve of and enjoy, or alternately dismiss it as unappealing and not to their taste. This is the relationship between artist and audience; the fact that a viewer may dislike a piece of work does not entitle them to alter it. This relationship between artist and audience does not always need democratising.

References

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