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This reading is in the coursepack. I'm a little late chiming in, but I'm wondering if Kreuger's belief that the aesthetic value should be solely the interactivity itself and not the art it may or may not produce is directly related to ideas set forth by John Cage. Did Krueger intend to remove his own predujices from the end result and make a framework that could create something inherent in a particular audience? The book that this reading is found in is also on reserve in the basement of Bobst library (just ask for call number QA76. 575 .M8319) or if you want, anyone can track me down and borrow my photocopy of the chapter, coffee stain and all. My first and most powerful response to the reading is that I had no idea that there was an artist working in interactive computer media this early. I knew that there were artists exploring computer graphics (like John Whitney) as early as the 60s, but I didn't know about Krueger's advances into interactive media. I'm interested to discover other early pioneers of the interactive realm. Anyone have suggestions of people to research? I think it was a clever choice to get the class to read this selection after introducing us to Crawford's definition of interactivity. Crawford defines what characteristics qualify artworks for the interactive aesthetic, and Krueger argues that the quality of the interaction itself (rather than the visuals or sounds that might foster it) should be the sole aesthetic concern of interactive art. Hence, the users' "response is the medium." I really appreciate the minimalism of this statement. I have to agree that the most compelling interactive works I have experienced use visuals and sound subtlely and forefront the manipulation of the viewer / user. I still wonder, however, if further along in the history of interactive art, more sophisticated sounds and imagery will be required to elicit responses from users. Or, will a compelling framework for interaction always be sufficient? For instance, Krueger compares the overlapping of two people's images on a screen in his Videoplace to a "psychological sensation akin to touch." Perhaps, for the first generation of people experiencing this phenomenon (as for the first people to see the Lumiere train pushing towards them in the cinema) there does exist such a sensation. But, as people become acclimated to interactive media, it seems like it requires more and more to make the viewer respond. Or, maybe, an artist just has to be clever about which elements of an interaction s/he emphasizes. Krueger's explanation of why he doesn't allow participants to talk in Videoplace provides a useful direction for working in this manner. Finally, I can't believe what people managed to do with the computers of their day. Ladies and gentleman...the PDP-12, the computer that Krueger used for Metaplay. I like this Krueger reading a lot for the reasons you mention. First, it's a clear case that there's a history, and that we still haven't gotten a lot further when it comes to video interactions. Thirty or more years later, we're still waving our hands in front of a camera. Arguably, we've gone backwards, since at least Krueger allowed for communication between viewer and operator through the system, rather than making it one-way. Second, I like his point that the interaction needs to have some bounds, or a goal, in order to satisfy an end user. these projects sound really cool. but am dubious about the interaction parts. wonder if he's decribing the theoretical audience reactions, rather than the actual end impressions of the audiences. he sweems to have entire control of how people would behave in reaction to part A of an interactive program, than change the program's behavior to B, etc. it's rare to get more than half the audience to do more than just look at it and walk away. he doesn't go into much detail about (what i consider) the biggest, most crucial challenge. how exactly can you entice a devout observer into moving, pushing buttons, etc.?!! the next step, is that if people have a hard time figuring out part A, changing it to part B is going to confuse them phenominally. but he doesn't say that was ever a problem? the changes from follow an x, to walk a maze are fairly simple, an elegent "callibrating" idea, but changing echoing footsteps to repeating them depending on the pauses between input, would probably only give an audience member the impression the piece wasn't operating correctly any more. maybe he got around that. but since the audience probably wouldn't even have a previous experiences of interactive art to recall, how would their reaction not be all the more unpredictable? these days designers can be a little more confident, that a certain percentage of the audience, will have some experience. like a cursor arrow turning into a hand pointing now means something to most fusers from first world couries. but the majority of viewers, even today, will view but not interact, many will be confused just by recognizing it's "technical", not "plain ol art". like an irrational fear/reaction of math (they always say "i'm not a mathy person" before shutting down that part of their brain), many make it impossible for themselves to comprehend. how did kruger get around this so gracefully? or did he just not mention (or maybe remember) most of the time it didn't work? how many people just walked away? where do they most often give up? this seems like tghe biggest, most realistic and concrete challenge we face? all good points. I don't think he got around the problems. In fact, I think he's describing a few of many user's reactions, because they're the reactions that were the closest to what he was looking for. I think he was working to build a language of meaningful gestures, and never quite got there. What he describes are the first baby steps, and he left it for future experiments, and the reader, to continue the work. I've seen Videoplace, set up next to other interactive video exhibits, and what disappoints me is that we haven't yet built on that language, despite the fact that we have some clear gestures that we use amongst ourselves as models. For example, in a video painting app like he describes, why can't a swift move to the actor's right mean "turn the page"? Why can't a back and forth motion with the hand (as opposed to the finger) mean "erase"? Strangely enough, I never see gesture used this way in Krueger-esque applications, and I've always wondered why. tom, funny. a recent scene relates to what you're saying. i had made a computer art installation thing that used camera tracking, but to show it to people far away, made a web demo that simply tracks the mouse. a curator, saw the demo and thought that was the piece for her show. fine by me. in essence, if you move to look at the installation version, the camera "sees" you and stuff happens. not so with the demo. a pleasant surprise, though. of the people i saw at the opening, they clicked to start the program and put their hands in their lap. the screen goes black, blank, waiting for something to happen. nothing does, so they start looking confused. finally, they all did the same thing! they must have thought the computer went to sleep, because they grabbed the mouse and shook it (fast and imprecisely like you do when waking a computer). this was cursor motion, that triggered things to happen on the screen. then users tried making it happen again, gradually extending to bigger and bigger gestures. couldn't help but think "gee, i wish i had thought of that." i'm just a little amazed that krueger was able to foresee these types of reactions. i know i could never predict or come up with this stuff intentionally. Great story, Judson. There's a similar story from Red Sky Interactive, who probably no longer exist. They did a study of user's behavior when they weren't working, or when the taskbar was onscreen. The number one reaction to the taskbar was shaking the mouse. So for their next application, they made shaking the mouse a way to toggle through windows and palettes. Nice use of a behavior unintended by the designer. It's amazing how fresh Kruger's ideas are thirty years later. We got bogged down by the technology and took a hiatus from thinking about the technology. Instead of technology being a means to an end, set aside for a particular purpose of task, for Kruger technology is an enabler, a collaborator where participant and interactive system work together to explore and learn. I especially like the emphasis on "impossible relationships". Current relationships are limited to mediums. Voice travels over the telephone and has a particular set of characteristics. "Telephone voice" has it's positives and it's limitations. When new technology is developed, it is bogged down by the concepts of the old medium. We have VOIP or we have cell phones but why not consider voice in the realm of the "impossible relationship". What if we could use technology to give us new insights into our voices, our conversations and our ways of interacting with others? Our voices could be altered depending on our intentions or meanings. Other voices, generated by technology, could join our conversation and voice redefining what it means to have a conversation. Although much more threatening, we have all these tools, we should be using them to explore the newly possible. In response to Judson's (and Tom's) comments above, I wonder if the novelty of any sort of interactive medium in the beginning of Krueger's work would have been enough to keep people around, trying things out. Kind of like how in '96 people would surf the internet just for the novelty of it, and keep clicking around to see what they could find next, instead of being results-oriented like we are now (in that vein, remember Yahoo!'s "Random Web Page" button? I think that only works in an environment where people are still impressed with the technology for its own sake). My favorite part of the reading was the descriptions of the surreal aspects of Videoplace, i.e., where objects move in unpredictable ways that are not based on our physical understanding of the world. The ability to do things that are impossible in actual physical space but to feel as though we are doing them in physical space is an interesting one. I think that there is a lot of potential to explore that direction further. Too often, it seems as though the notion of interactivity is only applied to augmenting the abilities we currently have. It would be great if through an environment like Videoplace we were able to develop new abilities not possible in the physical world. I think you're right about the novelty factor, Cory, and I think it's essential that technology developers pay attention not only to that, but to what lasts past the novelty factor. What aspects of the web novelty persisted? Cory, Krueger did mention that once the maze participants discovered it was unsolvable, they played with it as if to figure out how it worked. As for long-lasting Web novelties, this is hard. So many of the Web's fads are actually technologies that exist outside the Web, so I'm unsure if they'd qualify as "Web novelties." I can only come up with a negative example: people still love animated GIFs for some reason. How do things lose their novelty? It occurred to me after writing the above sentence about the maze that novelty wears thin after an object's inner workings have been revealed, a lot like a magic trick. Maybe that's why people still like animated GIFs. I liked Krueger's discussion of how these video-only systems still managed to convey some almost-tactile sense. Excepting some remote surgery applications that always seem too constrained, I haven't heard of any really succesful attempts at adding tactile sensations to telepresence environments to give participants a realistic sense of grasping or touching an object. Krueger's statements make me curious just how well you can fake it by just responding visually. Zach, check out SensAble's Phantom Everything old is new again… I found the Krueger interesting for some of the same reasons that Christian mentioned. I didn’t realize that interactive experiments that combined video and physical space were being done 30 years ago. What I like about Krueger’s descriptions is the sense of play involved. It’s not just that he and his team wanted to create a virtual maze that was a direct translation from physical world to screen, but one that took into account the ways in users might want to “test” the limits of the technology. The reading was especially interesting in conjunction with a “new toy” I saw featured this morning on a NY1 segment about Toys of the year. They were demonstrating GoGo TV (http://www.toyquest.com/GoGoTV/index.htm). According to the companie’s website, “GoGo TV is a unique new video game system designed to get kids off the couch and moving. The video camera puts you in the game. You are literally a human joystick.” And “GoGo TV combines video camera technology with infrared and motion sensors to put you in the game. You interact with objects on screen! GoGo TV is a cartridge based system. Most games come with interactive accessories that take game play to a new level. You’re not just playing a game, you’re in the game!” It’s almost as if the most significant update since Krueger’s writing is the idea that you can do this in your living room instead of a lab or a gallery. It seems that even though the technology has gotten “smaller” that the interactions, as tom mentioned above, are still based on waving our hands in front of the camera (e.g. BALLOON JUGGLING: The object of the game is to keep all the balloons from falling to the ground. PENGUIN MAZE: You will be a Penguin running inside a maze of ice. The evil Snowballs are chasing you). It’s also interesting to take a look at the manual for GoGo TV as they direct you how to establish the right conditions (lighting, etc) in your living room or the device “will NOT FUNCTION properly.” http://www.toyquest.com/GoGoTV/Guide/instruct_man_050801.pdf - Their way of forcing you to “calibrate” the system. That's so funny. I've been talking in shorthand for a couple of years about "Body-as-cursor" as one type of physical interaction project. In body-as-cursor projects, your body's position in 2D or 3D space acts as a cursor. It's a limited form of activity, because all you're asked to do is move from spot to spot, you're not asked to take any meaningful action. I regard it similar to how Chris Crawford thinks about refrigerator lights on the interactivity spectrum. What's often overlooked is that moving isn't all I do in a physical activity (unless the activity is Tag). I might also duck, jump, grab, touch, evade, etc. depending on what was causing me to move in the first place. Furthermore, the thing that's causing me to move is in conversation with me. It should react to my moves, cause me to adfjust my movements. Many body-as-cursor projects are like adjusting the antenna on your TV, unfortunately. You move to one spot to get a better image on the screen, then you stand there some more. It loses its fascination quickly without some more response. As a supplement to the reading, I came across a great audio interview with Krueger where he talks about his Videoplace installation and other works. He was definitely ahead of his time. 30 years ago he was trying to show people that computers were not purely technical, mathematical, scientific or frightening. They could also be be fun and playful . He points out that he was trying to make art that was about the body. In the interview, he says, "My medium is not really the computer... it's people" Long before it became the norm, he wanted to get away from the keyboard and mouse as the computer interface. He also talks about adaptive technology... where someone with cerebral palsy for example and can only move one finger can still have an interactive experience. http://www.artnode.org/art/fohns/myron/ I enjoyed discovering Myron Krueger and listening to what he had to say thanks to Cheryls link. While his work is surely ground breaking and stands up well to time there were several curious things that Krueger had to say that seemed to beg further examination. " ...our culture cannot continue if a large proportion of our population is hostile to the tools that define it." After reading Norman again, then this piece it seems that Norman called for tools to be so well thought out that they are transparent to the user. In other words, we need to work on technology to be good enough to match up with humans. Kruegers statement seems to indicate that we should be accepting technology, that technology is what defines humanity. I could have this bit wrong, but I much prefer the assumption that tools, technology and our use have a long way to go in relating to the human machine. The statement the overlapping video representations of people have the effect of "psychological sensation akin to touch.." seems to be reaching a bit as well. Regardless any artist can be forgiven for enthusiasm for the medium that he expands and develops. For a more balanced argument than either one of them offers on this point, see Paul Dourish's "Where the action is". He talks about how our use of tools shifts. We're aware of them while we learn them, then we're not aware of them until they break, or until we need to make adjustments. The process of work is a constant shift along an axis from transparency of the tool to focus on the tool and back again. In light of that, I think what Krueger is getting at is not that we should accept tools as they are, but that we take an accepting but critical stance. The difference between critical and hostile, for me, is that critique comes from a position of respect and consideration, in an effort to make something more than it is. Hostiility comes from a position of disregard or fear, often in an effort to destroy or negate something. This is the first I've heard of Krueger, and I'm surprised. He seems ahead of his time. Videoplace's teleconferencing concept was five years ahead of Nicholas Negroponte: "In the mid-1970s, ARPA launched a major research initiative in teleconferencing in order to address an important aspect of national security. The specific need was to transmit electronically the fullest possible sense of human presence for five particular people at five different sites. Each of these five people, physically separated, had to believe that the other four were physically present...Our solution was to replicate each person's head four times, with a life-size translucent mask in the exact shape of that person's face. Each mask was mounted on gimbals with two degrees of freedom, so it could nod and the head could turn. Perfectly registered video was projected inside of it. Each site was composed of one real person and four bobbing plastic heads..." Krueger's descriptions of the installations make me want to find them and play with them. But the picture in my mind is probably far from reality. There are modern parallels to his work (softshoe dance: Dance-Dance Marathon), so I probably have a distorted impression of his work's realism. Still, I'm curious. "These systems are constrained by the total inability of the computer to make certain very useful and for the human very simple perceptual judgments, such as whether a certain individual is a man or a woman...": It was obvious that Krueger wanted to extend computers' perception of users' environments. It's disappointing that his own installations, notably the maze, were aware of their users' surroundings, while 35 years later, the common mouse thinks it's on a boundless surface instead of an 8-inch square pad. Does he have thoughts on this? Here's my notes on the reading: "What is not known and remains to be tested is the validity of a responsive aesthetic." - WTF does that mean? Valid along what criteria? Given that it's an art piece I'm curious what the criteria are (how the responsive aesthetic could be proved to be valid or in invalid), and how he would judge it successful or unsuccessful. Personally I'm curious abou what this work means for interface design, so examining the piece as an experiment one could take deductions and assumptions away from would be useful. He expounds on this later in the piece, but it's still not clear to me if he thinks it was a success, or why. Does that mean that the show was mired in politics such that he couldn't make those kinds of deductions, or does it mean that these sorts of shows are ill suited to such deductions? The points about how his "environment" could be used made me think of how it could be useful for designing apps using this kind of interaction, but the execution is anything but rigorous. For example, as an engineer I'm pretty unclear how to make use of his findings. This makes sense as the show was primarily about exploration, but the hints he drops more than pique my interest. Is this just another iSight game scenario, or is the networking of this sort of interaction still fertile ground? "For the artist the environment augurs new relationships with his audience and his art. He operates at a metalevel." - welcome to modern game design! ;) I.e., MMORPGs seem to me to be all about designing a context to support new relationships between the environment, objects, characters, and audience. "Since the artist is not dedicated to the idea that his entire piece be experienced he can deal with contingencies." Meaning he can make it more marketable? Not to be crass here, but what does that mean? His point that users will attribute their completely random or incidental behavior to actions by the computer is quite true - isn't one of the main rules in interface design that users are stupid? ;) Towards the end of this article he points out that transportation costs are increasing and telepresence is becoming more cost effective, and that the latter should be explored from an intuitive sense as well as a strictly scientific and problem-solving one. Now THAT'S an idea I can get behind - I admit to being confused about the value of artistic exploration in this field, but the above sentiment makes some sense; by taking larger steps in a more relaxed, artistic context, we can learn valuable lessons by exploring the intuitive. He dives into this more at the end of this chapter as well, pointing out that new design is an intimate as well as an engineering task; that's a good point. Responses to the reading.... Overall: 1. Can I see a quicktime video of his installations? I’m certain what I’m picturing, probably isn’t what it looked like. Metaplay: 1. Krueger’s description of the structure for metaplay sounded hauntingly similar to my next icm assignment (move picture to x,y, and increment it by a+1). It kind of depressed me to think we’re kind of doing the same thing after 35 years. 2. People never cease to be intrigued by controlling things remotely and seeing their work on public display (re: the computer line that traces gestures and draws on screen) Response Is the Medium 1. “The relationship between inputs and outputs is arbitrary and variable – allowing the artist to intervene between the participants physical action and the results percieved.” He’s always refferring to “the artist” as this God-like figure who’s manipulating the user and often the enviroment (e.g., “the maze”) as well. To me, the user is the artist (or should be), and the creator of the enviroment is simply someone who gives the user a canvas of experience to play on. 2. “Currently, these systems are constrained by the total inability of the computer to make certain very useful and for the human very simple perceptual judgements, such as whether an individual is a man or a woman, or is young or old.” Again, seems like things haven’t changed much. 3. “What is not known and remains to be tested is the validity of a responsive aesthetic.” I think he’s basically asking is this art? And will it ever attain the prestige of “fine art” like painting, sculpture, etc. Will those who create it be considered artists or just... people who play with pixels? When photography first came out... no one wanted to call it art. Things have changed somewhat. This also made me think of one of Dan Shiffman’s comments about his “Swarm” piece. There was an article in the ny times about it: | Here's the link. At the end of the article Shiffman says his brother mentions his project would make “a really cool screen saver.” So... his project is featured at Siggraph – and (to me) clearly considered art there – but it could have as easily been introduced as mac’s latest screen saver.... and would it be thought of as art there? The computer, or a screen as a frame (like a frame over a painting) seems like it may inhibit the contents within it from being accepted as art...because people aren’t really used to looking at “fine art” on screen (unless they’re buying it off ebay). Conclusion 1. (Re: the huge impact of the technology/art we produce) “We must recognize this if we are to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made.” Whoa. Deep. That’s so... why I’m at itp! :) I think Krueger brings up a groundbreaking notion (especially at the moment in time when he wrote this) that the value of a work is the experience that it brings/the relationship(s) that it structures rather than any image or sound that it produces. However, I have often heard of interactive art spoken in criticsm precisely in this manner. That if the whole point is the interaction, what beyond the action of interaction is being offered? I am hesitant to go so far as to dismiss the sound and the visuals, because I feel that the whole system in total creates the experience, not simply the point of interaction. If the locus of meaning is being centered in this area, then I think we need to begin to think more carefully about the qualities of interaction, and the meanings that they produce, beyond simply the ability to interact. Krugar seems to be an early proponent of this idea, however even to this day thirty years later, we still see so much work where the focal point stops short to this point of interaction. There is a tendancy to talk about interaction as the point, rather than the exchange that produces a point; I feel this may be an instance where we collapse the media with the piece. In more traditional forms of art, there is often the discussion of payoff versus effort, and perhaps it may be antiquated but I as a participant, still carry over these expectations when I deal with interactive art. What does the work offer to the person who interacts with it? Why should a person give over their time and attention to engage? I have heard people say that the point is that there no longer is a point, that rather than an idea or a narrative that I absorb or take from an author/artist, now I enter a space where I am free to create myself. In terms of ideas, I am quite in love with this notion of the taking away of 'Art' in favor of play, but in practice, many times I feel the play stops short of giving me that breakthrough in thinking that 'Art' has many times so successfully delivered to me in the past. Maybe it's not possible to go back, but I still long for that hard shift in perceptions/thinking that 'Art' can provide. In Krugar's day, when technology was new, novelty was the payoff. Today this is no longer the case. I think other readers have brought up this point, that as the novelty wears off, we are all beginning to ask, why am I playing this game? I feel we need to distiguish more carefully between the different qualities of interaction. I see a large differnece between a case such as MetaPlay where the intention is to create a sense of discovery and expression through interaction: " ... we tried to preserve the pleasure of the original discovery.", as opposed to a maze where the experience is one that is highly dictated and composed by the 'artist'. Instead of simply looking at both as cases where interaction happens, I want to ask what is this person saying about me and the relationship I am in while engaged in this peice? As a participant I am aware of my manipulation by the space (however subtle). Summer's point about the 'artist as god' is a good one. I am ambivilant about this aspect of interactive art. As a participant it seems that I want to be lead along, but only if it takes me somewhere interesting. I've spent a lot of time over the last three years dealing with interactions in slightly different senses. In statistics, we analyze "effects" which are simply changes produced by some initiating factor. For example, the effect of taking a drug, like a birth control pill is the prevention of pregnancy. This would be considered a "main effect"--one that is measurable in the general population. However when doing analysis on multiple factors, like gender and the drug, we might find an "interaction effect" which is simply the difference in effect depending upon the combination of factors. Birth control pills reduce pregnancy 49% in the general population, but further analysis reveals an "interaction" between pill use and gender. The pill is 98% effective when taken by women, but 0% effective when taken by men. Without knowing about this interaction, you would know nothing about the birth control pills. The second manner of interaction is something we've all read about. Donald Norman discusses affordances, which are interactions between animals (in our case mostly humans) and the features of their environment. It is vital to understand that affordances are neither features of an object or of a human, but the intersection, or interaction point between the two. Stairs afford ascent, but not to infants or the elderly. Understanding whether ascent will be possible requires knowing something about the stairs, and something about yourself--an interaction. Krueger talks about interaction as an art space. This is very intriguing because, like in statistics and affordances, interaction in art is where the complexity happens. Arguably all art creates an interaction between the artifact and the viewer. It is neither wholly in the artwork or in the eye of the beholder, but created at the junction of perception and the piece. In this sense, interaction is the whole art space. Revealing this interaction, especially in a physical way, creates a higher conceptual dimension (a new way of seeing) where the intersection between viewer and artwork can be manipulated and examined directly. To work in this space effectively, the artist does need to guide the interaction because that's the canvas. Of course the degree and type of guidance is an important choice. Summer's omnipotent artist-god is at one end of the spectrum while her user-artist is putatively at the other. In both cases, the medium is the complexity created by interaction. This is an interesting and relatively uncharted place for art to go. Actually, I would say it's well-charted, by praticioners and theorists of performance. In the plastic arts pre-1970's, you're right, this was uncharted territory. But that's part of what led to performance art, happenings, etc. Performance theorists back to Aristotle have been saying, in effect: IT'S ABOUT THE ACTION." Brenda Laurel gets at this in "Computers as Theatre", but I think her biggest flaw in that work is that she leaves off at Aristotle, and neglects a couple thousand years of rich performance theory and practice that computer interface designers can learn from. One of the problems that I have with interactive art is that it tends to draw upon notions from the plastic arts when it has a lot more to gain from the performing arts. Whether we're talking about art or not, there is a great deal of value in thinking about the interaction between computers and people in terms of the action first. What I like about the Krueger piece is that he's fumbling toward that. He has no background in performance theory, he's a computer scientist and visual artist, but he realizes that there's something missing from both his disciplines, and he's trying to articulate it. Thirty years later, we can say, "Well, duh," because we're starting from well beyond where he had to start from. People like Laurel and others have come along and pointed out things that earlier practitioners overlooked, because they came from different backgrounds. The things we get to take as givens have a lot to do with the work of people like him and others. Reading through his notes (and those of others), with all of its flaws and false starts, helps us to understand the things we take as given, and, hopefully, to improve upon them. It also offers some idea (perhaps in its oversights) of what to do when we lack the language to describe situations or phenomena that we encounter as we work. For example, we might try looking to other disciplines in trying to articulate the new things we run across, rather than evaluating it solely with our own critical tools. Some of that is happening in the discussion here, so it's well worth reading each other in addition to Krueger. |