Interactive Screen -marginal report-

This is a marginal report of the current annual conference at the Banff
New Media Institute called "Interactive Screen" that has attempted to
address a wide range of topics such a production, distribution and
reception of both 'heavy' and 'light' interactive media (interactive
film, SMS messaging, educational software). This report is marginal
because I have not been able to attend all of the sessions in the
conference but will do my best to connect the dots in terms of what I
have seen and hear thus far.

The content of this conference took me a bit by surprise as it was
indicated right from the introductions that the majority of the
presenters were working in film or video, doing things such as pursuing
interactive narrative and shooting documentaries that blended fiction
with real life. This was intriguing because the discourse seemed to be
located in 1995, pre-net or net-condition, and had leapfrogged the past
five years of an internet art discourse that effectively produced and
supported works that were conceptually rich and took up limited band-
width. The discourse of interactivity, with narrative as its priori,
seemed to have taken back seat to the possibilities of the internet, and
was only partially carried through the adolescent street cred of video
games was in some ways back, and of course changed. The tools of
narrative production had been made more available to independent
producers and high quality film and animated images were made
increasingly more malleable. This "return of the repressed" in terms of
narrative interaction seemed to maintain key concerns that, (at least
with the projects I saw) go hand in glove with the construction of
literary, cinematic or gaming narrative: that being the concern with
emotional engagement (albeit tragedy, humour, or estrangement) and the
production of an interface that the user is able to navigate through and
keep interest in.

Although each presentation was short (restricted to 15-20min) I would
like to cover three projects that I feel take substantial swipes to
compel conceptually and emotionally. The first being the projects and
theory presented by Matt Locke that use SMS technology that have been
facilitated through test.org.uk and The Media Centre, in the UK. Matt
presented several text-messaging projects each with similar conceptual
frameworks that either received or delivered content from users. A
project that sent out content, gathered phone numbers from participants
who were aware that they were part of an art project and were to receive
messages that they were to perform. The performances were based on
prompts, dares and instructions that ranged from the specific to the
abstract which users were to act out as soon as they received the
message. Matt contextualized this practice by playing off of a term by
Hakim Bey, called TIZ (temporary intimate zones) that disrupted the
notion of position and location, in favor of place as content receivers
could essentially be in any place upon reception. The situation creates
a context that lends itself to relative models of interaction, feedback,
and interaction as architectural and behavioral characteristics of when
and where a user will receive interaction is considered.

The second project was a prototype for an immersive video called "Lamb
Hotel" by British artist Cath Le Couteur who wrote a black comedy that
placed four characters within four hotel rooms where a fire was to break
out, and one was to die. Once participating with the video, users would
only be able to see a total of 10minutes worth of film (out of a total
of 40min) that would be based on their navigational patterns in the
hotel. Users would be given cues as to where and when to move that would
be both visual (graphic cues such as buttons text, areas of interest in
the film) and sonic, through the figuring of the cuts and movement of
the user in response to the sound effects and track. Although the
prototype was presented both in single cell and dual cell, the resulting
production will most likely appear in a single cell, single channel
format. The narratives (I only remember three of the four) were
comprised of: a young house keeper who speaks on a Mobile and dumps
toxics on the floor; a young theatre director and his x-childstar mother
who argue as they are about to leave to the opening of the directors new
play; and a couple who accuse each other of infidelity in order to
improve their sex life.

The third presentation was by David Miller, a media producer from LA,
who had a set of production tools which he allowed a group of "kids" to
use for the quick and dirty production of videos.and essentially their
lives. The kids would work in teams and would film daily activities such
as skateboarding, bmx biking, slamming ones face into the concrete, that
would be sent to a server in real time and edited almost as fast, then
glued together with their favorite song of that moment. What was amazing
about this production, was not necessarily its content or the sensation
of seeing young teens mame themselves on metal bars and concrete curbs
(I used to do all this stuff when I was a kid!!) but the amount that
they produced in the time they had. Essentially they would make a 24min
episode in one day that was of relatively high quality in terms of
editing and impact. The project sponsored by Miller then provides an
interesting context of production of ones reality that is based ever so
slightly on a heightened sense of that reality, only the highlights with
a sound track. And provides a place where these kids can further
interact with each other and develop their own visual language.

What I think each of these projects lend to the consideration of
interactive media, interactive screens and interactive narrative is that
each engage with, to use an old term, tragedy or the movement towards
tragedy. This concept becomes important through the exchange that occurs
into and out of fiction into a landscape that is either documentary
located within an unknown urban place, or back into fiction where the
viewer makes decisions that are based on their own intuitions arising
from their daily practice and life. With the projects Matt presented a
possibility for interruption and possibly rupture occurs as messages are
read on signs or intervene in the form of a text message with the daily
routine of the content consumer. The interactive quality of "Lamb Hotel"
drives the user towards an undefined yet tragic result that is written
cleverly enough that it connects emotionally with the user outside of
the frame. And finally the fictive cycle of the kids videos that moves
into the documentary realm through the sheer volume of production
whereby these real life events which are based on a particular activity
that has its own media and production system is disrupted by speed and
spectacle. Maybe the each seem to me to have some sort of connection,
that in the end seems light, sort of portable, that these experiences
are somehow cause a break for me, whereby something isn't exactly
connected to my eyes.

Some interesting points that come out of this short examination and the
context it is written that I have found are,

+ the theoretical continuation of ideas found within theatre, film, and
drama, that have been in the video art world, the independent film
world, and the interactive new media world, but have not quite converged
onto the new and developing hybrid discourse that comprises that tenuous
and supple place of new media and art histories.

+ the place of spectacle, belief, and/or the suspension of disbelief in
terms of viewership and/or participation with a semi-fictive projects
with the question of how then is reality, fiction narrative and
representation reshaped.

+ what are the ethics behind active intervention into daily lives that
either promote produce or cause media spectacle yet are still bound
within the condition of mediation implicit to technology and
technologies of the self.

+ What role or consequences does this have on curation in terms
negotiating and supporting another area of hybrid production that does
not rest still like documentary photography, does not exist as the index
of conceptual art and does not provide passive viewership such as that
found within film and video installation.