The History of Interactivity
History of Medialogy Lecture 1 08-10-2007
History of Medialogy
• Expectations and interests.........
Grundteknisk kursus
• History of Medialogy (PE-MED) • Literature
– Packer, R. & Jordan, K. (2002). From Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York: W.W. Norton & Company – http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/index.html – Selected articles / book chapters
History of Medialogy
• Lecture 1 From Wagner to Virtual Reality – introduction focusing on the concept of interactivity + WP
Packer & Jordan: part 2
• Lecture 2
• Lecture 3
Historical overview: telephones, and television, to interactive multimodal performance systems Packer & Jordan: part 1 and 4 From Wagner to Virtual Reality – Inspirations to Medialogy studies (find
connections to your ‘inspiration’ in Packer & Jordan or other sources)
• Lecture 4 • Lecture 5
The history and future of games Selected
book chapters
Narrativity Packer & Jordan: part 5
Procedure
• White Paper
– Max. 2 A4 pages long, containing at least the following:
• Goals of the project + short description of it • Target group • Initial analysis - which kind of issues will need to be dealt with and what to expect. • How does the project relate to the courses and semester objectives. How are they going to be used in the project. • Preliminary time plan
INTERACTIVITY Cybernetics (Norbert Wiener, MIT, 1954)
• ”Society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it”
• Wrote about the nature of human-machine communication in 1948 – drawing from sociology to understand how people might interact with computers • The theory of cybernetics was meant to improve the quality of life in a technological society • Cybernetics – the science of transmitting messages between man and machine or from machine to machine. • The premise behind all HCI and interface design was based on Wiener’s insight
– Human communication should be a model for humanmachine and machine-to-machine interactions
Man-Computer-Symbiosis
(Licklider, 1960)
• ”Human brains and computers will be coupled together very tightly” • The computer is as a collabotative partner • In his article ARPANET in 1969 he proposed the idea of a symbiotic relationship between man and machine • The potential for a dialogue between man and machine; a symbiotic partnership
Personal computing
(Douglas Engelbart, 1962)
• The inventor of the mouse, windows, email, word processor, keyboard.....
– This transformed the way people interacted with computers
• Networked computing
– Enabling collaborative method of sharing knowledge among groups of professionals
Inclusive participatory art
(John Cage, 1966)
• Musician, composer, artist, poet, and philosopher • Included the participation of the audience in the creation of his work • In an essay Cage links the notion of an interactive listener to the concept of the computer as an agent of participation rather than as a ”labor-saving” device. • He changed the relationship between the artwork and the viewer
Interactive computer art
(Roy Ascott, 1966)
• Educator, artist, and theoretician – practioner of interactive art • Built a theoretical framework for approaching interactive artworks, which brought together characteristics of Dada, surrealism, pop art • Acknowledged information technology as the most significant tool of the age
– The dynamic exchange between technology and art to empower the spectator and deepen his or her experience
Responsive environments
(Myron Krueger, 1977)
• ”The responsive environment has been presented as the basis for a new aestetic medium based on real-time interaction between men and machines” • Influenced by John Cage and audience participation • Pioneered Human-Computer-Interaction in the context of physical environments – and a basis for an art form • Created artworks that responded to the movement and gesture of the viewer • His work was a parecursor to today’s global communications technology, including videoconferencing, networked virtual worlds, and live on-line chat
User Interface (Allan Kay, 1989)
• ”...when computer designers finally noticed, not just that end users had functioning minds, but that a better understanding of how those minds worked would completely shift the paradigm of interaction.” • Influenced by Douglas Engelbart (who introduced the mouse to the computer)
– Synthesized these influences into the most crucial advancement of HCI – the graphical interface (GUI)
• The idea of iconic, graphical representations of computing functions. Folders, menus, overlapping windows....
• Intuitive processes of learning and creativity
– The computer modeled after the brain (Norbert Wiener) and its sophisticated network of message passing and syoptic relays
• Jean Piaget, Seymour Papert, Jerome Bruner
Interactivity and Virtuality
(Jeffrey Shaw, 1992)
• ”Now with the mechanisms of the new digital technologies, the artwork can become itself a simulation of reality – an immaterial digital structure encompassing synthetic spacres, which we can literally enter.” Has explored interactivity and modes of perception in his performance art, sculpture, videos, and interactive media installations Interest: How can perception be affected by interactive environments that free the participant from a single, fixed point of view? Began (in the 1980’s) to incorporate virtual reality into his installations His work expanded Myron Krueger’s work on responsive environments by moving the interaction beyond the computer screen The participant was placed inside the virtual environment and allowed to navigate that space through gesures rather than with a mouse His work proposed user interface to be a central aspect of the artwork’s aesthetic
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Alice's Room - Computergraphic installation Shown at Kanagawa International Art&Science Exhibition, Kanagawa Science Center, Kawasaki-shi, Japan, 1989. In this installation back projected high-resolution monitor was mounted on a motorised turntable. An infra-red joystick controlled the 360-degree rotation of this screen and the synchronous rotation of the viewer's point of view in the computer-generated scene. This joystick also allowed the viewer to move his point of view forwards and backwards in the scene.
Pause
• After break Computer Graphics and Animation – a Critical history