[iDC] audience "interacts" by clapping/hooting/making bird calls/flapping their arms like a duck

[Honor Harger]

For those of you who haven't spotted this witty and erudite analysis 
of the key characteristics of interactive art, here's a treat for 
you, on the eve of the end of days:

Top-15 Criteria for New or Interactive Media Art are...

15. It doesn't work
14. It doesn't work because you couldn't get a hold of a 220-to-110 
volt converter/110-to-220 volt converter/PAL-to-NTSC/NTSC-to-PAL scan 
converter/serial-to-usb adapter/"dongle" of any sort..and the town 
you're in is simply not the kind of place that has/cares about such 
things
13. Your audience looks under/behind your table/pedestal/false 
wall/drop ceiling or follows wires to find out "where the camera is"
12. Someone either on their blog or across the room is prattling on 
about the shifting relations between producers and consumers..and 
mentions your project
11. 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
10. Your audience asks amongst themselves, "how does it work?"
9. The exhibition curators insist that you spend hours standing by 
your own wall text so that you can explain to attendees "how it works"
8. It's just like using your own normal, human, perfectly good 
eyeballs, only the resolution sucks and the colors are really 
lousy..plus the heat from the CPU fan is blowing on your forehead 
which makes you really uncomfortable and schvitz-y
7. Someone in your audience wearing a Crumpler bag, slinging a fancy 
digital SLR and/or standing with their arms folded smugly says, 
"Yeah..yeah, I could've done that too..c'mon dude..some Perlin Noise? 
And Processing/Ruby-on-Rails/AJAX/Blue LEDs/MaxMSP/An Infrared 
Camera/Lots of Free Time/etc.? Pfft..It's so easy..."
6. Someone in your audience, maybe the same guy with the Crumpler bag 
and digital SLR excitedly says, "Oh, dude. That should totally be a 
Facebook app!"
5. It's called a "project" and not a "piece of art"
4. You saw the "project" years ago...and here it is again...now with 
multi-touch interaction and other fancy digital bells and Web 2.0-y 
whistles
3. Your audience cups their hands over various proturbances/orifices 
at or nearby your project attempting to confuse/interact with the 
camera/sensor/laser beam, even if it uses no such technology
2. There's a noticeable preponderance of smoothly shifting red, green 
and blue lighting effects
1. People wonder if it wasn't all really done in Photoshop, anyway


http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2008/09/05/top-15-criteria-define-interactive-or-new-media-art/

-- 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

honor harger

present location: newcastle, .uk
email: honor at va.com.au
sms: +44 7765834272

-> r e s e a r c h
phd at z-node, ch: http://www.z-node.net/

- > p l a y
r a d i o q u a l i a: http://www.radioqualia.net

-> l i s t e n
radio astronomy: http://www.radio-astronomy.net

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .