WEDNESDAY 5TH DECEMBER SESSION

The Critical studies session today was very informative, we went through the following text first:

P. David Marshall - Forms of interactivity: the disappearance of the audience

This text raises a few interesting issues which I go into more detail within my sketchbook, but to quickly summarize my understanding of this text here are a few pointers:

• Critique suggest 'regulation and standardization'


• We become the author of interactive products e.g. games such as tony hawkes - modifications for levels, characters etc.


• Death of the author - potential for us to interpret


• Post-Structuralism - being part of a system


• Reclamation of the term "interactive"


• Idealistic views of the future e.g Manovich - social realism


• Traditional Photography - Realistic pictures, capturing the past


• Digital Photography - Everything is Manipulated, creating the future, CGI, Blue-screen (RELATION TO DISSERTATION)


• Touch - an interesting form of interactivity, we get a lot from touch and feel e.g. recognizing temperature, density, material etc

As stated this is explained in more detail in my sketchbook, please refer to this for more information on this subject.

The class were given a task to research one area of issue raised in the previous text, I was told to research Control and technological Adaptation, here are my notes from this section:

CONTROL AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADAPTATION

• Miniaturisation & Integration

- Micro Chips
- Allows Computer functions to be integrated and adapted into various products forms.

• A mobile phone is more than just telephony

- capacity to store numbers / addresses
- games displayed on a small screen
- integration of telecommunications with computer technology

• Digitalisation

- Converting all media forms into computer code

- Reduction of info into binary code

- Technology & Media is becoming simplified and less hardware based

• Capacity to store info

Computers have the capacity to store masses of complex codes

The development of micro-chips allows us to store masses of info into more compact machines

• Computers – Systems of Control

- good example is computer games

- objectives and goals cannot be changed

- With technology in gaming today this isn’t the case e.g Mods, Free Roam Environments.

Integration of different components / technologies

- “The nature of that information would work to adjust the missile to maintain the objective of the system”
( Quote from Wiener, 1948 based on his research when trying to shoot down planes with Missiles.

- Ultimately technologies are integrated together and they Adapt to produce more powerful / accurate / efficient technologies.

Again more of this can be seen in my sketchbook and explained in more detail.

We finally went through some examples of interactive art take from the International Compendium - Prix Ars Electronica 2006 Cyberarts Digital Festival.

Within the Interactive DVD we watched 3 main art interactive installations, the rest can be read about in the handout we received for this festival:

1. Paul De Marinis - The Messenger
2. Graffiti Research Lab (GRL)
3. Zachary Lieberman - Drawn

These scans of the text can be seen within my sketchbook with a detailed analysis of this festibal.