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12


questions

12. towards an aesthetics for interaction

concepts


technology


projects & further reading

As a project, explore the ways narratives may be constructed from a collection of images. Deploy the various editing facilities for providing flashbacks, flashforwards, and other (temporal) relations within storytelling.

You may implement this using flash, VRML, or even try to embed such a narration facility in a game level developed with the Delta3D or the Source SDK.

For further reading I suggest you to take a look at more theoretical material from media theory, such as  [Bolter and Grusin (2000)]. Also there is a large collection of books from MIT Media Press that is of relevance for our new visual culture.

the artwork

  1. einzelganger -- walking man of Albereto Giacommeti, taken from an aanouncement of the Ives Ensemble, Amsterdam.
  2. diagram MIME
  3. diagram experience as meaning
  4. Roy Lichtemnstein, 1962, (a) Kiss II, (b) Masterpiece, (c) Forget it, forget me.
  5. edgecodes -- showing George Lucas and his editoroid.
  6. El Lissitzky, suprematist works
  7. El Lissitzky, suprematist works
  8. Roy Lichtenstein, 1999, Still lifes with brushstrokes
  9. Les Demoisselles dAvignon, Picasso, 1908, regarded as the start of Cubism, and Le Goutier, Jean Metzinger, 1911, often referred to as the Mona Lisa of Cubism.
  10. signs -- abstract,  [ van Rooijen (2003)], p. 228, 229.
The walking man is one of my favorate sculptures, for over a long time. It is also associated to the motto of part iv: a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step . As an autobiographical note, the walking man, with einzelganger superposed (in translation loner), reflects the writing of topical media. In particular, the image put in sequence, reminds me of the repetitive complaints of my superior at the faculty, who over and over again told me that I was always alone in my room, isolated, on an island. I must admit there is a truth in this, as I felt that the disciplines of software engineering and multimedia are widely divergent, and in that sense I was on my own. This book has undergone many rewritings, due partly to a clash between the expectations of others and my own vision on multimedia. And with a superior who emphasizes that he is "the boss", but has no intellectual authority nor any inspirational leadership whatsoever, at least not in the area of multimedia and gane development, there is really no other way than to go your own way. So I did it my way, indeed, quoting Paul Anka's song, made 'unforgettable' by Frank Sinatra.

In other words, after this brief autobiographical digression, the visual theme of this chapter on the aesthetics of interactive systems is on individual judgement, as exemplified among others by the suprematist works of El Lissitzky, the amplification of cartoons as art by Roy Lichtenstein, and the pioneers of Cubism. After all, individual judgement is what you need, when you wish to be involved in multimedia and/or game development.


[] readme course preface I 1 2 II 3 4 III 5 6 7 IV 8 9 10 V 11 12 afterthoughts appendix references examples resources _

(C) A. Eliëns 21/5/2007

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