in Research

IM Class Notes

Interactivity: Ability of user to manipulate and affect one’s experience of media directly and to communicate with others through media 

The advent/invention of the computer

Vannevar Bush

  • Ideas are non-linear, idiosyncratic
  • A device that operated directly “as we may think

Relevant articles:

  1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/
  2. https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/02/23/as-we-may-think/

 

JCR Licklider

  • (1968) “The Computer as a Communication Device” illustrated his vision of network applications and predicted the use of computer networks for communications, instead of sole mathematical devices
  • “Man-Computer Symbiosis”: Creative collaboration, Tool to increase intellect and efficacy of man

Alan Kay

  • Dynabook: Personal computer used for communication as much as work (only came to actualisation 20 years after paper)
  • Computer to be Meta-Medium/Total Art Work

Cybernetics & History

  • The essential goal of the broad field of cybernetics is to understand and define the functions and processes of systems that have goals and that participate in circular, causal chains that move from action to sensing to comparison with desired goal, and again to action.

 

  • Reciprocal exchange: User can change/manipulate the medium and vice versa, intuitively and with immediacy

 

  • Indirect contact/control of the machinery; steerman/governor
    • Communication
    • Control

Roy Ascott: Human-Computer Interactivity (HCI)

  • 2 way exchange between the art and the viewer; feedback loop
    • Open-ended
    • Spectator engages in decision-making; participational

Marshall Mcluhan, ”Medium is the Message”

 

  • For McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled “the scale and form of human association and action.”

 

 

Hypermedia: The linking of separate media elements to one another to create trail of personal association. 

Reason for rise of hypermedia

  1. Growth of research/knowledge after the war
  2. Lack of a platform that collates/organises/provides information

→ INTERNET/COMPUTER

  • Emulate the brain that processes thoughts/stimulants simultaneously
    • Ideas are non-linear, idiosyncratic
  • Tool to increase intellect and efficacy of man

COMPUTER/”DynaBook”: Utilises Meta-Medium

  • To dissociate the computer with a work-machine by introducing play into the use of computers
  • Accompanied by the innovations in the gaming industry → proliferated recreational use of the computer

Hyper-text/Hyper-link: “I link therefore I am” → tells of one’s history and association

 

Immersion: experience of entering simulation or man-made 3d environment

Ivan Sutherland : “Father of computer graphics”

  • Interest in pioneering/advancing cybernetics
    • earlier contribution to computer graphics →  Sketchpad
    • Sensorama
    • Existing “VR” in 1950s: flight simulator → Link Trainer

Scott Fisher

  • Media tech & first-person simulation
    • Sensorama, Morton Heilig (1960) is a hallmark of the immersive experience – total sensorial engagement/ Meta-Medium → interactive, interactive
    • Similar projects are Deep Contact by Lynn Hershman, Aspen Movie Map at MIT, Cinerama (1960)
      • Commentary on internet dating, communication online
    • Suspension of disbelief
  • Evolution of Virtual Environments
    • Videoplace, Myron Krueger,  1975
  • Osmose, Char Davies, 1995
    • Deep-diving, control position through breathing/ immersant
    • reaffirm the role of the subjectively experienced, giving the immersent a sense of presence in cyberspace
  • Virtual Environment Application — applications of Cybernetics
    • ‘Telepresence’ — presence at a distance
    • Dataspace — Advanced data display/manipulation of information
  • Personal Simulation
    • Telesurgery
    • Pokemon go
    • Jewel
  • Tele-collaboration through 
    • Communication on the digital space
      • SKYPE, CAVE