Interactivity

Description

Week 3: January 30 – February 5

The reciprocal exchange between the viewer and the artwork, the ability to manipulate media and objects intuitively and with immediacy. This topic explores the evolution of the technical, aesthetic, and cognitive concepts behind human-computer interactions, and their influence on the art, design and application of interactive media. Beginning with the fundamentals of cybernetics as conceived by engineer Norbert Wiener in the late 1940s, we will discuss subsequent scientific breakthroughs in human-computer interaction including Douglas Engelbart’s oNLine System and the invention of the mouse. We will then explore parallel cybernetic and interactive tendencies emerging in the arts during the 1960s through the writings and work of John Cage and Roy Ascott.

 

Assignments

Due next week: February 6

Reading

Research Critique

Each student will be assigned a work to research and critique from the following list:

Write a short 300 word essay summarizing the assigned essays, and apply your understanding of the concept of hypermedia to the assigned work, and how it expresses ideas found in the readings. Use at least one quote from each reading to support your research and analysis.

The goal of the research critique is to conduct independent research by reviewing the online documentation of the work, visiting the artist’s Website, and googling any other relevant information about the artist and their work. You will give a presentation of your research in class and we will discuss how it relates to the topic of the week: Hypermedia.

Here are instructions for the research critique:

  • Create a new post on your blog incorporating relevant hyperlinks, images, video, etc
  • Be sure to reference and quote from the reading to provide context for your critique
  • Apply the “Research” category
  • Apply appropriate tags
  • Add a featured image
  • Post a comment on at least one other research post prior to the following class
  • Be sure your post is formatted correctly, is readable, and that all media and quotes are DISCUSSED in the essay, not just used as introductory material.

Be prepared to synthesize and present your summary for class discussion next week.

Outline

Artworks for Review

Nam June Paik, Magnet TV (1965})

The Korean born Nam June Paik’s (1932-2006) formative years were grounded in the study of rigorous post-Webern, twelve-tone music composition. After meeting the iconoclastic American composer John Cage at the Darmstadt Summer School of Music in 1958, Paik turned to performance art and mixed-media works that challenged his classical roots.

Nam June Paik (Korea)

Most important, Paik embraced the medium of television, and became the founding father of video art. Beginning in the early 1960s, Paik created numerous works that explored the creative possibilities of television as an artistic medium.

Paik interacting with Magnet TV

One of the earliest works was Magnet TV, in which he placed a Magnet on top of a television set as a deliberate act to disrupt the television signal, and hence the broadcast. The work was originally intended to be interactive, using a magnet donated by Billy Klüver, however viewer interaction is generally discouraged by museums that treat Magnet TV as though it were a static object. However, this was not the intention of the artist, and so we can think of Magnet TV as one of the earliest examples of interactive media art.

The magnetic field interferes with the television’s electronic signals, distorting the broadcast image into an abstract form that changes when the magnet is moved. Paik’s radical action undermines the seemingly inviolable power of broadcast television by transforming the TV set into a sculpture, one whose moving image is created by chance procedures and can be manipulated at will. Through his transformation of the television image, Paik challenged the notion of the art object as a self-contained entity and established a process of instant feedback, in which the viewer’s actions have a direct effect on the form and meaning of the work. The interactive quality of Magnet TV paralleled the audience involvement essential to performance art and Happenings of the early 1960s, and also anticipated the participatory nature of much contemporary art. – Whitney Museum of American Art

Paik’s long and prolific relationship with electronic media continued with the cellist Charlotte Moorman, in controversial performance works such as Opera Sextronique (1967) and TV For Living Bra (1969). Paik’s oeuvre later included television sculpture, satellite art, robotic devices, and giant video walls with synthesized imagery pulsating from stacks of cathode-ray tubes.

Charlotte Moorman performing Nam June Paik’s “TV Bra for Living Sculpture” (1969)

In the brief, mischievously elfin manifesto “Cybernated Art,” Paik suggests that art should embrace the technologies of an information society. Paik presents himself as artist-shaman, synthesizing art and technology in an effort to exorcise the demons of a mass-consumer, technology-obsessed society. Paik uses rejected media artifacts in his work, such as vintage television sets; his video works, with their liberal doses of “cybernated shock and catharsis,” are poignantly cynical pieces that comment on an American techno-culture dominated by starry-eyed optimists.

In the latter essay, “Art and Satellite,” he explains that the material of the information age—the raw data, the continuous flow of content—is becoming an intrinsic element of his artwork. He sees in the satellite, the most advanced communications technology of its day, an opportunity to connect minds and encourage new ways of thinking. Through the connectivity of a “cybernated society,” a work of art can become dynamic, always changing, as data flows through the wired network and across our screens. As the artwork incorporates the unending flow and restless nature of information itself, transcending geographical boundaries, it brings about a “synthesis” of all cultures across borders.

John Cate, Lecture

John Cage (1912-1992) is perhaps the most influential American composer of the 20th century, and in large part, because of his radical approach to musical composition using indeterminacy and chance, as well as his close relationship to performing and visual artists, notably Merce Cunningham. Together they created many dance performances with visual sets and multimedia elements.

John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Variations V (1964) with Cage, David Tudor, and Gordon Mumma in foreground performing electronic score, Carolyn Brown in background in dance performance

He (Cage) and David Tudor settled on two systems for the sound to be affected by movement. For the first, Billy Klüver and his colleagues set up a system of directional photocells aimed at the stage lights, so that the dancers triggered sounds as they cut the light beams with their movements. A second system used a series of antennas. When a dancer came within four feet of an antenna a sound would result. Ten photocells were wired to activate tape-recorders and short-wave radios. Cecil Coker designed a control circuit, which was built by my assistant Witt Wittnebert. Film footage by Stan VanDerBeek and Nam June Paik’s manipulated television images were projected on screens behind the dancers. The score was created by flipping coins to determine each element and consisted of thirty-five «remarks» outlining the structure, components, and methodology. The specific sound score would change at each performance as it was created by radio antennas responding to the dancers’ movements. Variations V is performed for a television taping session in Hamburg. The photocells were located at the base of the five-foot antennas placed around the stage. Cage, Tudor, and Gordon Mumma operate equipment to modify and determine the final sounds.  – Media Art Net

Graphic Score for Fontana Mix

John Cage used chance techniques to avoid the habitual tendencies of deterministic musical composition, to create a music devoid from choice. Although he did choose the types of sounds, textures, and other musical relationships, the specific musical sequence of sounds was left to chance. This corresponds to our study of interactivity in the musical compositional process, in which the composer is using systems that enables a shift of control from the artist to the process.

This work demonstrates the idea of indeterminacy by creating unpredictable, indeterminate relationships between music, dance, and image. In the center of the stage is a sensor/pole that tracks the motion of the dancers and uses this movement as a control source for the sound score.

Robert Rasuchenberg, Soundings (1968)

Soundings is a 36 foot long sculpture made up of three layers of Plexiglas. The front layer would be partially mirrorized and behind are two layers of Plexiglas with images of a wooden chair on them. Different lights behind the sheets of Plexiglas would vary in intensity based upon the amount of sound in the room and backlight the images so they would be visible through the mirror.

Robbie Robinson brought in Fred Waldhauer, who had designed the proportional control system for 9 Evenings, and I suggested they consult Cecil Coker, a scientist who was working in speech analysis at the Labs. Waldhauer, Coker and Rauschenberg got together and decided the sound would be divided into four frequency bands, so that a high-pitched voice or sound would trigger a different set of lights from a low-pitched voice or sound; that is, children would trigger different lights from adults standing beside them. – Billy Klüver

Soundings is also one of the earliest interactive media works that drew from the vocal sounds of the viewer to activate lights in the Plexiglass sculpture, which lit images of chairs. This work created an entirely new role for the viewer, rather than a passive recipient of the work, the viewer actively helps shape and effect its quality with the sound of their voice.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008) is considered one of the pre-eminent 20th century artists. He was originally associated with the “New York School,” along with painter Jasper Johns and composer John Cage. Rauschenberg is best known for his “Combines” and “Assemblages,” which make use of found objects and appropriated materials to create collages combined with painting and sculpture. He was also known for his performance art from the 1960s. Rauschenberg collaborated extensively with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, and designed sets for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Robert Rauschenberg, Retrospective, collage (1964)

Readings

Hence “Cybernetics,” which I derived from the Greek word kubernetes, or “steersman,” the same Greek word from which we eventually derive our word “governor.” – Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener

The idea of “steersman” comes term for steersman who navigates the boat, in which the human being is given leverage on the control of the machine, in many cases, a machine much larger and more powerful on the human, such as a boat or ship.

Greek boat with steersman

When I control the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him… Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood and has been obeyed.

This form of interactive, two-way messaging between humans is akin to the steering of the ship, or a modern day car, in which he message from the human to the machine elicits a response, which is then responded to or corrected by the human. It is a reciprocal exchange that demands back and forth actions and communication to maintain stability.

… in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever increasing part (of society).

Meaning that the well-being of social relations and its interactions with machines requires an understanding of systems of cybernetics, and so too the artistic forms that have emerged from human-human and human-machine interactions.

To me, personally, the fact that the signal in its intermediate stages has gone through a machine rather than through a person is irrelevant and does not in any case greatly change my relation to the signal. Thus the theory of control in engineering, whether human or animal or mechanical, is a chapter in the theory of messages.

In essence, theories of reciprocal messaging and communications between people can equally be applied to machines.

In control and communication we are always fighting nature’s tendency to degrade the organized and to destroy the meaningful; the tendency, as Gibbs has shown us, for entropy to increase.

The natural progression towards disorganization or degradation or amorphous quality of the signal in the act of exchange is referred to as ENTROPY.

The process of receiving and of using information is the process of our adjusting to the contingencies of the outer environment, and of our living effectively within that environment.

INFORMATION is the content of the reciprocal exchange between humans or machines, and as we will see, INFORMATION is increasingly the content of contemporary art, as opposed to the object.

To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man’s inner life, even as they belong to his life in society.

And so the quality of exchange as understood in the context of cybernetics is integral to the quality of life, and so too, the quality of interactive art.

In fact, we are now no longer concerned with the study of all possible outgoing and incoming messages which we may send and receive, but with the theory of much more specific outgoing and incoming messages; and it involves a measurement of the no-longer infinite amount of information that they yield us.

Wiener is saying that in cybernetics, we are not looking at physical phenomena abstractly, but as specific acts of communication and transfer of information between the observer and the machine.

… it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of its entropy, and the negative logarithm of its probability. That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems.

He is saying that predictability creates stability whereas indeterminacy or unpredictability creates entropy. How might we look at interactive art using this criteria?

The figures themselves (automata) have no trace of communication with the outer world, except this one-way stage of communication with the pre-established mechanism of the music box. They are blind, deaf, and dumb, and cannot vary their activity in the least from the conventionalized pattern.

Can we associate automata, pre-configured actions that are entirely predictable, with say, the object, which is a closed system of finite possibilities, and then compare to the interactive artwork, which has a greater degree of unpredictability, and is thus behavioral and is thus in a changing state of flux and entropy?

Astronomical Clock, Strasbourg Cathedral, Strasbourg, France

I have contrasted the prearranged behavior of the little figures on the music box on the one hand, and the contingent behavior of human beings and animals on the other.

The question then becomes: how do we view art as behavioral?

Modern automatic machines such as the controlled missile, the proximity fuse, the automatic door opener, the control apparatus for a chemical factory, and the rest of the modern armory of automatic machines which perform military or industrial functions, possess sense organs; that is, receptors for messages coming from the outside.

Wiener implies that the cybernetics permeates our lives and the quality of our interactions on a daily basis.

The most complicated machines yet made which transform input data into output data are the high-speed electrical computing machines.

Cybernetic control of input/output data is then altered or learned in the MEMORY of the machine through programming, such as referred to by Wiener through the use of punch cards.

This control of a machine on the basis of its actual performance rather than its expected performance is known as FEEDBACK, and involves sensory members which are actuated by motor members and perform the function of tell-tales or monitors-that is, of elements which indicate a performance. It is the function of these mechanisms to control the mechanical tendency toward disorganization; in other words, to produce a temporary and local reversal of the normal direction of entropy.

It is through FEEDBACK from the machine (or person) that the interaction gains stability and predictability, rather than tending towards ENTROPY and disorganization.

Similarly, when I drive a car, I do not follow out a series of commands dependent simply on a mental image of the road and the task I am doing. If I find the car swerving too much to the right, that causes me to pull it to the left.

The avoidance of ENTROPY, depends on the response to FEEDBACK, in order to achieve stability in the system of exchange or communication of information between the user and the machine.

It is my thesis that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback.

It is now our challenge to apply these principles of cybernetics to the creation and experience of interactive art.

 

But it is our purpose to demonstrate that Modern Art is fundamentally of a piece, that there is unity in its diversity, and that the quality which unifies it is in distinct contrast to the essential nature of the art which went before it. We shall describe this quality as “behavioural” and we shall show how it evidences our present transition from the old deterministic culture to a future shaped by a Cybernetic Vision.

Ascott distinguishes contemporary art as a departure from determinism as “behavioural,” which draws its characteristics of flux, change, indeterminacy from the confluence of cybernetics and new interactive forms.

The vision of art has shifted from the field of objects to the field of behaviour and its function has become less descriptive and more purposive.

All of the works we are studying, Magnet TV, Variations V, and Soundings, are essentially behavioural in nature, they are responsive to the viewer (or performer), they are not fixed, and they will change from moment to moment.

We find an insistence on polemic, formal ambiguity and instability, uncertainty and room for change in the images and forms of Modern Art. And these factors predominate not for esoteric or obscurantist reasons but to draw the spectator into active participation in the act of creation; to extend him, via the artifact, the opportunity to become involved in creative behaviour on all levels of experience—physical, emotional and conceptual. A feedback loop is established so that the evolution of the artwork/experience is governed by the intimate involvement of the spectator. As the process is open-ended the spectator now engages in decision-making play.

The spectator (or performer) is no longer passive, but is a protagonist who can help determine or shape the outcome of a work. This is a radical paradigm shift from earlier art forms, such as painting, sculpture, drawing, in which the viewer receives, but does not reciprocate.

The participational, inclusive form of art has as its basic principle “feedback,” and it is this loop which makes of the triad artist/artwork/observer an integral whole. For art to switch its role from the private, exclusive arena of a rarefied elite to the public, open field of general consciousness, the artist has had to create more flexible structures and images offering a greater variety of readings than were needed in art formerly.

Thus one of the key tenants of cybernetics, FEEDBACK, which is essentially a kind of negotiation between the machine and the viewer, becomes integral to the relationship between the viewer and the artwork/artist.

Pepsi Pavilion interior, 1970

The modern artist, on the other hand, is primarily motivated to initiate a dialogue, to set feelings and ideas in motion, to enrich the artistic experience with feedback from the spectator’s response.

Interactive art is a DIALOGUE, while you can think of the previous fixed forms as a MONOLOGUE between the artist and the viewer. In the latter, the artist tells the viewer what to see, whereas in the form, the artist gives up a degree of control to allow the viewer to see something uniquely activated by their own action.

An important characteristic of Modern Art, then, is that it offers a high degree of uncertainty and permits a great intensity of participation.

Thus previous order is about order and certainty, interactive art tends toward ENTROPY and indeterminacy.

Indeed, unlike Classical Art, there is no point at which it can be said to have reached a final form.

The interactive art is in a continuous state of transformation, never “finished,” always changing, not an absolute finality in its realization.

The modern means of communication, of feedback and viable interplay—these are the content of art. The artist’s message is that the extension of creative behaviour into everyday experience is possible.

So there is this tendency towards process, the “act” of making, which was once specific to the artist, but now includes/involves the viewer/performer.

The grounds for supposing that Art has anticipated this integral situation and is prepared for it can be found in the emphatically behavioural tendency which it displays. Cybernetics is consistent with Behaviourist Art; it can assist in its evolution just as, in turn, a behavioural synthesis can embody a Cybernetic Vision.

The works we are studying are in essence behaviorial, but can also be found in manifestations of performance art, while not of a mechanical or computer-based nature, reveal this tendency towards the behavioral, such as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece:

But it is important to remember that the Cybernetic Vision in Art, which will unify art with a cybernated society, is a matter of “stance,” a fundamental attitude to events and human relationships, before it is in any sense a technical or procedural matter.

It is important to understand that it is not just a matter of using cybernetic systems in art, but of creating art that is relevant in the context of a cybernated society, to be understand how we as humans fit in and can understand/embrace the systems that increasingly govern our lives.

Hole in Space, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (1980)

The basic principle is feedback. The system Artifact/Observer furnishes its own controlling energy; a function of an output variable (observer response) is to act as an input variable, which introduces more variety into the system and leads to more variety in the output (observer’s experience).

Just as Wiener describes FEEDBACK as integral to the negotiation between the artwork and the viewer, this is how we can think of behavioral art, as a function of input/output.

Wipe Cycle by Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, 1969

The artist’s creative activity is also dependent on feedback; the changes which he effects in his immediate environment (or “arena”) by means of tools and media set up configurations which feed back to affect his subsequent decisions and actions.

The artist essentially must design into the interactive work the allowance of FEEDBACK as a way of shaping the user experience, to create a system of balance (homeostatic).

The necessary conditions of behaviourist art are that the spectator is involved and that the artwork in some way behaves.