I’d like to begin this last post in our conversation with the video from the Exquisite Bodies exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, particularly because of the depiction of the inanimate or imaginary body as something for entertainment and as an interactive object. At around the one minute mark, you can observe curator Kate Forde demonstrate a beautiful anatomical model that one can “dissect” by lifting or folding down paper flaps, exploring the body interactively in an analogue fashion. While this example may seem utterly divorced from the conversation that we are having about contemporary notions of interactivity and digital media, I think it’s relevant. As simple as they are, the paper flaps are interactive and educational, and presumably everyone who came into contact with them knew how to use them.
Designer and researcher Julian Bleecker once created a list of the “Top 15 criteria that define interactive or new media art“, and one of these tongue-in-cheek criteria was “Your audience “interacts” by clapping/hooting/making bird calls/flapping their arms like a duck or waving their arms wildly while standing in front of a wall onto which is projected squiggly lines.” As hilarious and hyperbolic as his list is, it raises some serious issues with the genre, most notably, that when there is no clear call to action or way of developing a relationship with a work, audiences resort to “making bird calls” in an effort to elicit an evolution in the artwork they are viewing. A failure to provide clear protocols means that an experience meant to be about the work devolves into people asking each other, “is this thing on?”
From my point of view, I suppose that where interactivity can turn into play is at the point where the interaction design makes play possible. Earlier this year, I curated an exhibition entitled “The Aesthetics of Gaming” at Pace Digital Gallery in New York City. The exhibition presented two game environments: Avoid by Joe McKay (pictured above) and CuteXdoom II by Anita Fontaine and Mike Pelletier. The works address both the intertwining of games and stories and the aesthetics of artist-created games. But most importantly, I feel that the development of games by artists has something in common with the anatomical studies (both as entertainment and as serious study) in days gone by: the hand of the artist plays a significant role, and the dexterity of the artist and participants to visualize and construct reality in 3 dimensions determines the depth of an audience’s experience. These artists have had to investigate how games might work under the surface, as well as provide a compelling aesthetic surface that will draw players in.
It goes without saying that video games are part of a massive entertainment industry, and that several generations of people now know many conventions of game play in this context. While the complexity of game modification and design presents a unique challenge to artists, the conventions of game design can provide the cues that will prevent any “is this thing on?” moments. It also provides a consistent framework to work against — because audiences are familiar with gaming conventions, assumptions of how an experience is to be navigated or how a narrative will be resolved can be challenged. Like the paper flaps of yesterday, the game controllers and joysticks of today smooth the way towards insight into the guts of an artists’ message, whether an artist chooses to work with conventions, or against them.
Ellen Moffat is a multi-media artist currently based in Saskatoon. Originally from Toronto, Moffat has lived and worked throughout much of Canada. Her work includes interactive and multi-media installation as well as sound works. Her interests can be grouped under overarching themes of identity and migration. However, her most recent emphasis has been on language and the voice. She allows viewers to become participants, recombining words to make text based work or to make compositions from phonemes, discrete units of speech. Moffat explores the possibilities of voice and text in their capacity for varied signification through recombination as well as their irreducible otherness.
We are currently privileged to have Ellen take part in one of the BlackFlash 2.0 conversations with curator and scholar Michelle Kasprzak. To read what they have to say about new media and interactivity, read the conversation. Please note that the posts are ordered from newest to oldest. To read the conversation in its entirety, please scroll down to the bottom.
Twicescore, 2008
The quote below is taken from Ellen Moffat’s website:
twicescore is a multi-user visual poetry instrument using dual keyboards and physical controllers. Two keyboards provide physical interfaces for text generation with controllers for manipulation of type as typographic design. The separate texts are projected as integrated concentric circles onto a bed of glass bead on the floor. Poems can be posted to a web site as a publishing outlet and public archive. Inspired by ”zuverspaetceterandfigurinnennenswert ollos”, a 1962 rota-poem by Ferdinand Kriwet, the project fuses interactivity, co-authorship and concrete poetry.
