EMMA: New Ground

GUI

The article by Soke Dinkla From participation to interaction was particularly interesting to me because for the first time I could see a path to my project. I also enjoyed seeing the relationship of Kaprow to Cage and how they intersect with art and technology. I have done a lot of site-specific improvisation and been a part of events that were like Happenings so I understood them from a sensory point of view but this article makes them seem relevant to where I am now. The last line “The artistic material of interactive art is the automatized dialogue between program and user.” (Dinkla 289) really solidified my understanding of what I am attempting with a live video game. I kept thinking that the user(audience) would drive the performance but this cannot be for several reasons. The audience would not know how to respond unless given explicit instructions like at a Happening. If one show up to a traditional theater and expects to observe, the expectation itself would prevent them from initiating anything. As I have learned with Liz Lerman one can trick the audience into participating getting them to do what they are already doing and making a game out of it. Simply tell them they do not have to participate and tell them to sit down. They would have to stand up in order to not participate in the game but would be interacting none-the-less.

After reading the Alan Kay article I could not help but think of my first computer, an Atari 400. http://oldcomputers.net/atari400.html I was so hopeful that I would learn all about computers, become a programmer and get rich. The computer played video games and was more powerful than the Atari 2600 and had better graphics but one had to program using BASIC. I only ever learned to program a few things. I could make text scroll up and down the screen in patterns and I could make text flash on and off. The interface was quite challenging and so was the programming language but then again I was only about 12 years old and did not have any instruction and I hated math. Thinking back to my first windows machine and the OS Windows 95 there was a huge change in what the computer did and how one used it. Finally, I was using programs to accomplish tasks instead of attempting to write programs and there was the Internet which meant that I could seek lots more information than what was on my local drive. One of the best GUI that I know of is in the game You Don’t Know Jack. It uses the principals that Kay discusses in terms of doing, hitting a button to buzz in, with images, after reading the question and deciding on the correct answer, makes symbols, either you are correct or incorrect and you are punished or rewarded.

posted by Unknown @ 2:22 PM