So for the last two weeks we have been at the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin Germany (see http://super.tacheles.de/cms/ ). At the house is an artist and hacker and Dr. of Philosophy who goes simply by the name of Pjotr. Originally from Vienna Austria Pjotr has been making highly conceptual works that involve reality hacking as well as machine and computers. He works with other artists to help to realize interactive elements in their works. He is a deep thinker involved with theories on interactivity from pure ontology to ideas of collective intelligence. We had a good talk with him but sadly lost some of it. We were able to do a short re-take that nicely presents his ideas in a more compact form. Please read and post your comments. Also he mentioned a site for MAX patches which is http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~jovan02/cv/objects.html
along with several important authors and ideas which include: Jacques Lacan, Steven Johnson, Paul Virllio, ontology. Please add your comments.
along with several important authors and ideas which include: Jacques Lacan, Steven Johnson, Paul Virllio, ontology. Please add your comments.
6 comments:
The lecture with Pjotr about MAX/MSP had a few bugs, but was still a good session. We talked about interactivity and what constitutes true interactivity. I got a little confused about Pjotr's definition of interaction. He seemed to change his mind a few times, or still be wrestling with his exact definition of it. He would say that interactivity was a very broad subject, that we interact with everything on a day to day basis, and that it is the experience that is interactive. Later he would go on and say that it was not interactive, and my head would start to get confused.
I do wish we could have seen some of his MAX patches in action to see if he was making something interactive by his definition.
This was not my favorite lecture, probably because of the technical difficulties that we were experiencing, but it was nice to have someone else's point of view on interactivity, but I feel like something was missing from it, not quite sure exactly what though.
The lecture with Pjotr was a let down for me because I think I had a certain of level of expectations. We were informed that Pjotr's work focuses on interactivity with Max/MSP and Jitter application, yet we did not see much of them nor did he really talk in depth about his work. I consider this to be the weakest of the lectures.
What I did find valuable was the direction the conversation was going about how we can define interactivity and how is this incorporated into 'new media'.
I wish we should have spoken more about Max/MSP, because its a program I am familiar with and it seems that it has become a program that many students in our New Media program either are really afraid of or are very comfortable with.
I feel students get in the way of themselves in creating projects. They are afraid to challenge themselves and take the initiative in learning new things. Max/MSP is just an example, it's one tool of many.
Had we not run into so many technical problems I am sure the lecture would have been stronger.
The lecture like others have said was weak, but I to do agree that the discussion was going somewhere useful, and interesting. We talked a lot about and around the theory of interactivity, and what it was, and how it worked, we were pealing back the layers and examining it from the inside out.
Pjort and Raph spoke about interactivity as something that basically could change over time, and with the user’s input, the interactivity is in the way it feeds back to the source of the input. I find this to be very true; and I believe that what we are calling interactive in new media is a substitute for what real interactivity is, and that we are constantly striving for that ideal, but we have yet to reach it. Raph talked about some other ways of producing work that in themselves would interact themselves, such as video paintings on food that rots over time, and films that interact with the viewer in a way that generates a reaction out of them, such as crying or a feeling of happiness. Pjort argued that though with the film it is the film interacting with you and creating those emotions, its only one way, and in the same way the video paintings, though they are changing they cant take an outside input and produce a change because of that input that then can be changed, though they are changing over time they are only changing because the substrate is unstable and is interacting with the natural environment.
I agree with Pjort, about films, and how they are only one way, also how the video paintings are more of a passive interaction with the viewer seeing the change and seeing the interaction of the video with the substrate. The two are more or less the same thing that they are only one way the viewer has no input into them and they are merely getting a reaction in themselves that is the result of seeing or experiencing the medium the medium does not in it self change because of their reaction.
Over all the lecture could have been better, but it did raise some important points about interactivity and its preconceptions and how it is what we are striving for and have yet to really achieve it. Is it even possible? Well that is a whole big question in itself.
As mentioned by the others, this lecture was rather weak, not only because of all the problems we experienced, but because Pjotr did not go into more detail about his work and the things he does using MAX/MSP. I myself am not familiar with the program, but from everything I heard I'd been expecting him to explain a bit about what he does, and I did not get what I'd hoped for...still, I liked listening to the other things he had to say, I just wished that I'd had a chance to learn more about it.
As mentioned in previous posts, Pjotr talked about interactivity a lot, and though he was vague on his definitions, he did state that interactivity is something that changes and is defined by the way that it works with the input of the user. While I think that this is a fairly good definition of interactivity in the technological definition of the word, I would also have to agree with Brian, who said that interactivity is more than that, and that the things we call "interactive" in new media are very different from what real interactivity is. This related back to the idea of simulacra, what is real and what isn't, and I think it's important to differentiate between these two types of interactivity, because there is a definite difference.
INTERACTIVITY! Though I feel like the first lecture and this lecture are far and few between (minus some of the concepts) this was a great way to go back to that first class we had about narrative because I remember thinking and speaking some on interactivity and how that was a huge part of the new paradigm of narrative. Pjotr did seem to wrestle with definitions like Kory said, but just as with new media interaction (though I do think it is a little more defined than new media) can have many levels to the definition. Interaction can be with your mind, body, spirit, or really just eyes. I truly believe anything is interactive, but we don't see it like that in today's culture. We see "push button - get response" as a type of interaction, but really films (though very low levels) include cognitive interaction within the brain itself. Video games include a higher level of interaction, but really things like MAX/MSP do give a full fledged definition of today's connotation of interaction.
It would have been nice to see some more of the types of things that Pjotr was talking about - examples and such. I thought there would almost be a tutorial , or at least demonstration of some sort through his own projects.
Though a lot of people have said that the lecture was weak you have to take from it what it was. Ironically enough, there wasn't much interaction on the part of using MAX or showing off projects, but there was some speak of interaction and what that meant.
This lecture, as stated by the few before me, was rather weak in that I did not feel completely satisfied with the work Pjotr was showing. I think a more detailed, in depth discussion of his work concerning how he came up with the idea, what it could be used for etc. would have been more useful.
However the topic of the discussion did have some positive parts. The discussion on interactivity and how Pjotr kept changing his definition on what exactly interactivity was got me thinking what I thought interactivity was. And like the definition of New Media itself I realized that it was very broad. Due to today's society we have a very cultured definition but I believe and agree with Matthew in that basically anything is interactive. If you take movies for example, just the requirement of the audience staring at a screen for a certain period of time is a level of interactivity. So although an overall weak lecture, it still did not fail to cause me some in-depth thought.
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