Professional Documents
Culture Documents
David Rokeby - Transforming Mirrors
David Rokeby - Transforming Mirrors
David Rokeby
133
Models of Interaction
Navigable structures
It is often said that Interactive artworks blur the line between the
artist and the audience. The audience becomes creator ln a
medium invented by the artist. The artist enables the interactors to
express themselves creatively.
Myron Krueger has developed a complex set of video-centered
Interactions that he calls Vtdeoplace. 16 The Vtdeoplace Installation is
made up of a video camera, a video projector, and a rack of spe-
dalized processors. The interactor's Image, as seen by the camera,
Is interpreted as a silhouette. This silhouette ls analyzed In various
ways and a response ls generated and updated thirty times a sec-
ond. Writing of a subset of these interactions called IndMdual Med-
ley, he has said:
cratic prism. After a while, the posters began to blend together Into
an urban wallpaper of MacPalnt textures and MacPalnt patterns.
The similarities overpowered the differences. Since then, graphics
programs for computers have become much more transparent, but
that initial creative fervor that MacPalnt Ignited has abated. The
restrictions that made MacPaint easy to use were also the charac-
teristics that ultimately limited its usefulness as a medium for per-
sonal expression. One can look at the distribution of a creative
medium in the form of a software package as a subde form of broad-
casting.
Transforming mlrron
Initially realize that It Is his own image, and falls Into despair that
the youth ln the pool does not return his Iove. 19 Noting that the
name "Narcissus" is derived from the Greek word narcosis (numb--
ness), McLuhan writes
Automata
Although he hopes that his works wlll surprise him, Myron Krueger
feels that "nothing should happen In an Interactive medium unless
It is a response to some action by the partlcipant"15 since this would
be confusing to the interactor. Other artists create artworks that are
not Intended to be an extension of the lnteractor, their creations are
essentially self-motivated and autonomous. These automata sur-
vey and maneuver through their environment, of which the specta-
tors are only one aspect.
The Holy Grall for these artists is the self-replicating, self-sus-
taining machine--artificial life. The immediate alms are less lofty.
Nonnan White alms to endow his robots with what he has termed
"artlftdal sanity," which he defines simply as the machine's abUlty
to make sense of its environment.
Whereas most interactive works present acoustic, visual, or
conceptual environments, these works present indlvldual entities.
As a result, their Interactions with the public take on the nature of
social behavior and relationships. Although these works use many
of the approaches and technologies used by other kinds of interac-
tive works, it is not the Individual lnteractor who is reflected In
these works so much as human behavior itself. In a sense, the
responsive environment and the automaton complement each
other, representing both sides of the relationship between man and
the social and natural environment.
A particularly provocative example Is White's Helpless Robot.
This Is an unusual robot because although capable of perceMng, it
Is Incapable of moving.