<nettime> Re: GENERATION FLASH [Klima 2x,napier 3x,Kanarinka, Sawad]

["nettime's_flashometer_I" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

Table of Contents:

   Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad                                  
     John Klima <klima@echonyc.com>                                                  

   Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad                                  
     napier <napier@potatoland.org>                                                  

   RE: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Usability/Interaction                        
     "Kanarinka" <kanarinka@ikatun.com>                                              

   Re: <nettime> GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad                                     
     Sawad <sawad@utensil.net>                                                       

   RE: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Usability/Interaction                        
     napier <napier@potatoland.org>                                                  

   Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad                                  
     John Klima <klima@echonyc.com>                                                  

   Re: <nettime> GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad                                     
     napier <napier@potatoland.org>                                                  



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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 12:22:20 -0400
From: John Klima <klima@echonyc.com>
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad


when discussing artwork, soft or not, the focus is naturally on the
appearance of the thing. its the first thing you encounter when you
"see" it. it's how it looks that makes the first impression regardless
of the function. lets not forget that we are still primarily dealing
with a visual medium here. the problematic aspects of interactivity are
precisely why i make work that does not *have* to be interacted with,
and by so doing, i relinquish all responsibility to make it "easy to
use." the public expects "ease of use" as the most critical element in
software interaction, how often has this appeared in promo materials and
advertising? allways. i can't think of a single piece of software
advertising that does not include those three words. but where in the
museum catalogues and art reviews do those words appear? never. "this
jackson pollock is easy to use and integrates seamlessly with your
couch."

if the discussion focuses on interaction, the question of usability
always seems to be the priority.  why should the user be considered at
all? this isn't a spereadsheet, there is no productivity that needs to
be considered. concerns of human interaction seem to me to be more
scientific concerns than art concerns. by what criteria do we assess an
aesthetic of interactivity? i recently met someone who when they first
grabbed a mouse, they turned it around so the wire pointed the opposite
way, so the "head" of the mouse pointed foward and the "tail" behind, as
would seem to make sense. they subsequently reversed in their brain the
axes of movement, and concluded that the screen was a mirror not a
window. they continue to interact in this manner, to this day. how can
one ever discuss interaction when not all people agree what is left and
what is right? this is certainly an exageration of the problem, but it
highlights the situation that not all users are equally capable of
interaction. hell, some people are in wheelchairs and can't reach the
mouse in an installation situation like the biennial. some people have
no arms. this suggests to me that the primary element of software art
still firmly resides in what is displayed on the screen, and second how
it got there, and third, how a viewer interacts with it. however, i do
firmly believe that the best work includes all three.

best,
j





napier wrote:
> 
> This discussion of software (Flash) aesthetic focuses on the appearance of
> the software-artwork rather than on the function.  I doesn't make sense to
> put John Simon, Lisa Jevbratt and Golan Levin in the same sentence without
> distinguishing that Golan's work is meant to be *used*, where the other two
...

<nettime SNIPs> 



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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 13:34:44 -0400
From: napier <napier@potatoland.org>
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad

At 12:22 PM 4/29/2002 -0400, John Klima wrote:

>when discussing artwork, soft or not, the focus is naturally on the
>appearance of the thing. its the first thing you encounter when you
>"see" it. it's how it looks that makes the first impression regardless
>of the function.

First impressions are surely based on the visual, but lasting impressions 
are based on the overall experience of the piece, the impact it has 
intellectually, the gut feel that it creates.  If we talk only about 
appearance we'll miss the point of most art of the past 50-100 years.

>the public expects "ease of use" as the most critical element in
>software interaction, ....
>.... but where in the
>museum catalogues and art reviews do those words appear? never.

Because the concept of "usage" does not exist in art prior to 
software.  The "use" of a painting is that you hang it and look at it.  Not 
much to talk about there.  Software doesn't have to be "easy" to 
use.  jodi's site is deliberately difficult to navigate, yet it can be 
navigated, and figuring out how to get around and where things are is part 
of the experience.  Also in mouse-responsive work like turux.org, the mouse 
motion drives what happens on screen, but not in an obvious or linear 
way.  The screen often responds surprisingly to the mouse motion, which is 
more interesting than a simple 1 to 1 mapping of mouse motion to graphic 
motion.

>  how can
>one ever discuss interaction when not all people agree what is left and
>what is right? this is certainly an exageration of the problem, but it
>highlights the situation that not all users are equally capable of
>interaction. hell, some people are in wheelchairs and can't reach the
>mouse

And some people are blind and can't look at visual art.  That doesn't stop 
the discussion of visual aesthetics.

>  the primary element of software art
>still firmly resides in what is displayed on the screen, and second how
>it got there, and third, how a viewer interacts with it. however, i do
>firmly believe that the best work includes all three.

Right.  And given that we're talking about software art here, and we're not 
too handicapped to experience the art on all three levels, I think it's 
worth talking about all three.

mark

napier@potatoland.org


------------------------------

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 14:05:47 -0400
From: "Kanarinka" <kanarinka@ikatun.com>
Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Usability/Interaction

hi folks,
I really like the focus on interaction here. I think that this is one of
the keys to understanding the medium that we are trafficking in. Let's
keep up the dialogue.

On the "ease of use" tip ::: a note

I think all too often people (artists, software programmers, audience,
users all included) confuse "usability" with "interaction". Usability
has to do with how accessible and "easy to use" your work is. Usability
answers questions like: Can it be viewed on multiple browsers,
platforms, etc.? Is it confusing in unintended ways? This is
"user-centered" thinking only in the sense that you are trying to make
sure that your user does not have unintended hardware/software/cognitive
problems accessing your work. To give an example -- If your work were a
building, usability would be like making sure that your doorways were
designed so that people fat and thin, wheelchairs and not, etc. could
all make it around inside. 

Designing for usability is important but designing for interaction is
much more interesting. 

Interaction design answers questions like "Why do users want to do
something with my work? How can users enter into a meaningful, engaging
performative space with this work? What is the incentive towards action
in this case?" To go back to the building metaphor  -- interaction in
that case would be - why do you want to visit the building in the first
place? what happens to you inside the building? what kind of experience
do you have inside the building? how are you changed after leaving the
building? 

interaction design poses questions and problems much larger and more
creatively charged than just "how can we make this thing user-friendly?"
the most effective net/software/digital/artronics art of this new age
will be able to answer these questions and solve these problems in
interesting, challenging, meaningful ways. 

[and ways that, by absolute necessity and contrary to what goes on most
of the time even now, incorporate thought about the "end-user" right at
the beginning of the creative process]

cheers, kanarinka





 

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-list@rhizome.org [mailto:owner-list@rhizome.org] On Behalf
Of napier
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 1:35 PM
To: John Klima
Cc: Lev Manovich; nettime-l@BBS.THING.NET; nettime@BBS.THING.NET;
list@rhizome.org
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad

...

<nettime SNIP's>



------------------------------

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 14:28:44 -0400
From: Sawad <sawad@utensil.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad 

At 09:09 PM 4/27/02 -0700, you wrote:
Therefore the number of people who after reading my text accused me of
confusing a technical standard with an aesthetics missed my argument . The
vector oriented look of "soft modernism" is not simply a result of narrow
bandwidth or a nostalgia for 1960s design - it ALWAYS happens when people
begin to generate graphics through programming and discover that they can
use simple equitations, etc.


Lev,

I appreciate very much your response to my comments, and I will post a 
response later in the week. In the meantime, I wanted to very briefly 
elaborate on a criticism I made in my earlier post, as well as to make an 
equally brief and perhaps inadequate comment on the quote above.

Earlier I wrote:

<quote>
There is no reason that software art canno[t] use/create "images" in the
narrowly defined sense of "pictures," or any other form we identify from
our experiences with so-called old-media. Through software one can create
images or effect any number of sensuous phenomena. Your position vis-a-vis
the "modernism" effected by the Flash protocol, which is designed to
deliver compressed animation over relatively narrow bandwidth seems to me
mistakes technological limitations for an iconoclastic morality.
</quote>

After I posted my response, I reflected further on what seemed to me as 
your confusion of technical limitation with morality. I did not cease to 
think that this was a confusion. However, it occurred to me that this 
confusion was not necessarily rectifiable in the context of aesthetic 
discourse.

Historically, Western aestheticians have embraced systems for 
distinguishing painting from sculpture, and these from architecture. Upon 
such distinctions, various evaluative criteria have been calculated. But 
valorizing arguments seem to me have also depended on such distinctions. In 
one such example, modernist concerns over the surfaces of paintings were 
given memorable expression in the earlier writings of Clement Greenberg, 
where "flatness" was expanded from being a characteristic -- a limitation, 
if you will -- of paintings toward a figure existential sincerity.

My thoughts are not that modernists artists and critics were wrong. 
Regardless of our own perspectives on such an interpretation and its 
ramifications and conclusions, it strikes me that what we call morality is 
precisely always based on some theory of how we respond to forms (whether 
we acknowledge such theories or not). This is not moral relativism, but 
moral *response*, regardless of the theory of mediation between forms and 
us. Perhaps this confusion is a necessary product of all theories of "the 
subject." In other words, Greenberg's conclusions seem to me sound, *within 
the constraint of an aesthetic theory of subjectivity*. I realize now that 
it is easier to say that technical standards and aesthetic morality should 
be distinguished, than to articulate a methodology for definitively 
accomplishing this task.

Among the modes of address assumed by theoreticians and critics toward an 
artwork is questioning its construction : asking why an artist makes a 
particular decision and not a different one. This useful mode also opens a 
trap of confusing the critic's point of view with the physical context of 
creation. It is important to acknowledge that not all options, nor even the 
ones that a critic imagines, are available for artists during the creation 
of artworks. Though this may seem obvious, it is less obvious why we 
repeatedly enter this trap. Your assertion that "it ALWAYS happens when 
people begin to generate graphics through programming and discover that 
they can use simple equitations, etc." seems problematic in this way. While 
it seems to me correct, as well as a very important point, that "The vector 
oriented look of 'soft modernism' is not simply a result of narrow 
bandwidth or a nostalgia for 1960s design," it seems to me that you might 
be overstating your point when you state that this "ALWAYS" happens when 
people begin experimenting with graphics programming. Even if we understand 
that you are limiting your statement to include only "software artists," 
the set of imaginable circumstances under which this hypothetical group 
would always choose this aesthetic course seems to me preconditioned by a 
number of factors, including technical mastery and the graphics 
"primitives" afforded and perhaps most easily manipulated by beginning 
programmers.

Of course the issue surrounding a nostalgic anti-mastery cannot be 
dismissed so easily, specially as I believe it supports your stated desire 
to create something new by appropriating modernism in combination with 
post-modernism. However, the possibly mythic dimensions of this 
appropriation cannot be dismissed either. You might be interested in a 
response I posted to Alex Galloway a few years ago, in which I argued 
against his valorization of what he thought was technical simplicity in 
"net.art." [1]

[1] My comments are archived in the Walker Art Center's "Shock of the View" 
and in an online interview Steve Dietz conducted with Beth Stryker and 
myself. http://collections.walkerart.org/item/text/143


Sawad


------------------------------

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 15:47:08 -0400
From: napier <napier@potatoland.org>
Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Usability/Interaction

At 02:05 PM 4/29/2002 -0400, Kanarinka wrote:
>Designing for usability is important but designing for interaction is
>much more interesting.
>
>Interaction design answers questions like "Why do users want to do
>something with my work? How can users enter into a meaningful, engaging
>performative space with this work?

A good point.  It's valuable to clarify the language, and I agree that 
interaction is the better term for what we're talking about.  I avoid the 
word sometimes because of the hype that has surrounded it in recent years, 
yet it is true that some software artwork intends to be interactive, while 
other work does not.

Interaction is effective when it adds meaning to the artwork ie. a 
participant gains insight into the work, or contributes to the meaning of 
the work as a result of their interaction.

mark



napier@potatoland.org


------------------------------

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 16:03:28 -0400
From: John Klima <klima@echonyc.com>
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad



napier wrote:
> 
> At 12:22 PM 4/29/2002 -0400, John Klima wrote:
> 
> >when discussing artwork, soft or not, the focus is naturally on the
> >appearance of the thing. its the first thing you encounter when you
> >"see" it. it's how it looks that makes the first impression regardless
> >of the function.
> 
> First impressions are surely based on the visual, but lasting impressions
> are based on the overall experience of the piece, the impact it has
> intellectually, the gut feel that it creates.  If we talk only about
> appearance we'll miss the point of most art of the past 50-100 years.

but perhaps in software art, the appearance is not talked about enough.

> >the public expects "ease of use" as the most critical element in
> >software interaction, ....
> >.... but where in the
> >museum catalogues and art reviews do those words appear? never.
> 
> ...The screen often responds surprisingly to the mouse motion, which is
> more interesting than a simple 1 to 1 mapping of mouse motion to graphic
> motion.

is it? or does it simply confound the user. why does jerry saltz hate it
when there is an input device? he's part of the conversation too.
 
> And some people are blind and can't look at visual art.  That doesn't stop
> the discussion of visual aesthetics.

it does for that person. that visual art is visual, it is a given that
it requires the use of eyes. that chuck close can't grab the mouse at
the whitney bugs the hell out of me. that jerry saltz wont grab the
mouse also bugs the hell out of me.
 
> >  the primary element of software art
> >still firmly resides in what is displayed on the screen, and second how
> >it got there, and third, how a viewer interacts with it. however, i do
> >firmly believe that the best work includes all three.
> 
> Right.  And given that we're talking about software art here, and we're not
> too handicapped to experience the art on all three levels, I think it's
> worth talking about all three.

that lev posts an essay whose focus is on the aesthetic does not
preclude the discussion of function, and as i mentioned above, it seems
that a little more discussion about the appearance might be a good
thing. and the questions i'm posing actually are very much a
conversation about interaction.

best,
j


------------------------------

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 16:20:26 -0400
From: napier <napier@potatoland.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad 

At 02:46 PM 4/29/2002 -0400, Sawad wrote:
>The history of art provides too many examples where artworks are "used," 
>in one way or another, even perversely, to create other meanings for 
>artworks and/or their larger contexts.

To clarify, I'm not talking about "use" in a metaphorical sense, as in 
using artwork to communicate meaning, or changing the use of an artwork by 
changing the context of the work.  In the broadest sense of the word, you 
could say that art is "used" by the culture to explore and communicate 
ideas, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

When I say "use" I mean a literal manipulation of the medium of the artwork 
itself.  As in adding a blob of paint to a Mondrian.  Or changing the color 
scheme of a Barnett Newman.  There are cases of artists re-using other 
artists work this way, but these are rare compared to the number of 
artworks that are frozen behind velvet ropes.

In software we can interact with an artwork and alter the appearance of the 
work, using the medium of the artwork itself, without destroying it, and 
also without requiring unusual or esoteric manipulations of the 
medium.  The interactive nature is built-in to software.  Not so with 
painting, sculpture, or even video.

>  But the unfinished or "open" aspect of software artworks seems to me 
> needs to be further refined, if it is to be considered a uniqueness that 
> differentiates these works from "previous forms."

Agreed.  We have a catch-all term, "interaction", that covers everything 
from pushing a light switch to exploring a game or an artwork.  I have not 
heard a language that adequately describes the qualities and nuances of 
software interaction.  Meanwhile interaction is a prominent feature of 
online artwork since 1994 and continues to grow both in games and artwork.

mark

napier@potatoland.org


------------------------------

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