Dear Beryl, Sally Jane, Danny and all everyone who has been following  
the thread,

Thank you for your feedback. It is very interesting to get a point of  
view from artists and curators. We do work from the perspective of  
designers, where we often are not our own client and respond to an  
exterior brief.

Two main topics have been picked up: timing and authorship.

 From our interactive design perspective, timing affects engagement  
in two manners: in its relation to when a response is given to
participant input and in relation to keeping a momentum throughout  
the experience.

Often, the more immediate the response, the easier it is for the  
players/stakeholders to associate their actions with it, to relate to
it. Helping to exploit the full potential of the impact, immediacy of  
feedback mechanisms gives a greater sense of interactivity.

Experiences can happen over a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, years.  
For any scale, momentum needs to be sustained. Time scale is always a  
factor to reflect against other factors – how much intensity of  
interaction is needed over what period of time? What level of  
engagement do we need from users over what period of time? Various  
techniques can be used to maintain momentum: creating a sense of  
suspense, planning a series, breaking up long periods of time with  
new events. By planning when and how events come into the experience,  
timing creates the story.

Perhaps the later is more relevant for curators, in the sense that  
each piece has their own timeframe and together, they create a new  
timeframe that the visitor/stakeholder/player navigates through and  
momentum must be kept as a whole.


Regarding authorship-

 > I'm quizzical about the equation whereby "the more authorship is
 > shared, the more it allows for many stakeholders to appropriate the
 > piece" etc etc. Does voting within a democratic system make you an
 > author of that system's collectively validated decisions?

It depends....

 > How do you ensure that top-down definitions and mechanisms of
 > authorship (and of the categories it corresponds to) don't deride
 > stakeholders, abusively vouching for their (lame/ constrained)
 > participation?

This kind of lame/constrained participation happens in all kinds of  
projects. Not just with designers. In any piece at all, there is  
always an instigating author. If it's an artist who has decided to  
build a forum for contribution, an urban development project to make  
a change in a community, a company who wants to send a branded  
message, or an educator who decides to engage students. In sharing  
authorship, it's the approach that makes the difference.

As different stakeholders actively take part in the process or the  
outcome of a project, they have power to change the course of events,  
to become co-authors. There needs to be a negotiation of how much  
effort a stakeholder puts into conveying his or her story, while  
letting the other players build upon it. When setting up the rules,  
choices are made to decide how authorship is shared, how much each  
stakeholders’ input can contribute, and how much the unexpected can  
happen.

– Rules promoting low level of authorship: provide choices within a  
scope which limits creativity and self expression.
– Rules promoting high level of authorship: provide the ability to  
voice opinion and change the outcome in a manifest and personal way.

Rules promoting a high level of authorship allow for many players to  
appropriate the piece, making it more customisable, fostering a sense  
of belonging, empowerment, and responsibility. They can make the  
exchange work like a good conversation, naturally and consciously.

 > It seems to me that many instances of what might be called "shared
 > authorship" (notably by people who profit from them) leave others
 > feeling sidelined, disenfranchised and non-responsible.

Who are the 'others' that are feeling left out? Were they identified  
from the beginning of the project? If so, why has there been a
decision to rule them out of the process?

This is a recurrent phenomenon and this is why our framework starts  
with identifying the players. It seems that this type of situation
happens when only a set of stakeholders are taken into account and  
others are left out of the process. We feel it is key to make a
portrait of all the people who will/can be involved and the type of  
engagement is expected from all. Even if a decision is made to rule
out some stakeholders for numerous reasons, the quality of their  
engagement needs to be considered.

But this does not mean that 'everyone' needs to be involved in the  
process or the outcome for an experience to be engaging or  
worthwhile. However, engaging people does make a piece feel  
different. For example, Shân Maclennan, head of Learning and  
Participation at the Southbank Centre, when talking about the  
sincerity of engaging participants said "a project feels different  
when there has been participation, the people who have been there  
have sort of left their DNA.”


Happy Tuesday everyone,


Melissa and Kelsey