Hello,

I'd like to open the bidding on this month's topic by raising some 
points that have been present in my research but haven't yet been 
formulated into anything more formal. I'd welcome constructive input, 
on or off list.

 >Is interaction inherently live?

If we are suggesting that interactivity (ie, interaction with a 'new 
media object') is 'live' (ie, performative), then can we understand the 
interactor (reader, user, viewer) as a performer? If so, we need to 
consider the 'audience' and maybe even the 'stage' which comprise the 
context for this performance.

In interactive installation work, which will be the main focus of my 
argument, the interaction is usually in the first person, with one 
audience member controlling the piece at any one time, others waiting 
for control, and still more watching from the sidelines. (There are, of 
course, loads of caveats to this, but bear with me). This suggests a 
stratification of involvement, analogous to way audience is understood 
in Augusto Boal's forum theatre. First, there is a protagonist, or 
performer, who makes the work happen. In forum theatre, this would be 
the person or people initiating the event, attempting to draw an 
audience or open a debate. In interactive installation, the protagonist 
would be the one audience member who is controlling the work at any 
point. Second is the 'spectactor', who is involved in the work but not 
driving it. In Boal's work, this would be a bystander responding to and 
implicated in the conversation (or conflict) that is initiated by the 
protagonist, but not driving this conversation. In interactive 
installation, this would be an audience member who is not in control of 
the piece, but has either previously been in control, or is about to 
take control. Finally, there is the spectator, who watches passively as 
the work is operated by the others. In Boal's work, this is the 
audience to the debate taking place in the work, while in interactive 
installation, it's the audience member who hangs around at the edge of 
the space, watching the piece and its interactors. All of these are 
mobile categories, with audience members jumping from one to the other 
at will. [A good example of a piece that illustrates this is 'The 
Nature of History' by Simon Robertshaw: there is a delineated 
'interactive area' in which protagonists and spectactors exchange 
control of the piece; passive spectators view the piece from outside 
this 'interactive area'.]

It seems to me that these three delineations of audience experience 
lead to significantly different styles of reading. Actually 'doing' the 
piece engenders a different (although not necessarily better or worse) 
interpretative experience than watching someone else 'do' it.

The performative aspects of the process of interpreting a work are also 
interesting in this context. Auslander has suggested that the 
characteristics of performance (in order to delineate it from theatre) 
are, among others, a rejection of illusion, a foregrounding of the 
action of the body in the performance space, and a preoccupation with 
the duration of the experience. In many ways, these are applicable to 
the experience of interacting with interactive installation. There also 
is an extent to which any interpretation of an artwork is a 
performance: a performance of meaning for the duration of the viewer's 
engagement with the work (I need to do more research to back this up: 
I'm drawing on Derrida and Fried to support this I think).

Here I am separating the 'doing' of the work from the interpretation of 
the work, when in fact, for protagonist and spectactor, the two 
overlap. It seems that the key distinction here is that the spectator 
is interpreting the work *and* its protagonist and spectactors. (Can 
you interpret VNS without interpreting the movement of the performer as 
well?)

The protagonist is performing the work for an audience, and performing 
themselves in front of an audience, as well as performing the meaning 
of the work for themselves. I'm not a live artist, but I would think 
this correlates quite closely to the way that a live artist would 
operate. The spectactor, however, is performing herself in front of an 
audience of spectators, but is not performing the work for that 
audience; she is also performing the meaning of the work for herself. 
(This is another area where there's loads more research to do to 
understand what this is about: it feels interesting and specific.)

So I'd propose that the answer to the question is a 'yes' in the 
context of interactive installation. There's more work to do to develop 
the argument into screen-based work or locative media (Anyone?).

The other important point I wanted to raise (briefly) is the 
possibility that generative works are in themselves performative. There 
are senses in which randomly generated or algorithmic works are 
'performing' their code, although the preoccupation with duration is 
often qualitatively different, focussing on potentially infinite 
durations rather than limited ones.

Hope this gets the ball rolling, looking forward to your responses.
Best wishes,
m
--
michael day
http://www.unmoving.co.uk
http://www.hostoffice.org.uk