[-empyre-] interactive video as error

[Barbara Lattanzi <threads@wildernesspuppets.net>]

I have used the hiatus in my participation in this discussion to absorb the 
insights of Komininos, Adrian, James, Simon, Ed, Jim, Alan and 
others.  Thanks for numerous valuable insights and references... e.g., 
Michael Polyani, whose work I was completely unfamiliar with.

Also, there were detailed discussions of actual interactive net projects by 
Marc Garrett and Chris/babel.

I am interested in the fact that the conversation about specific works spun 
into a discussion of the virtual.

Is this side-stepping intentionality?  What about performance in 
interactive video for the web?

For example, the performativity of users is foregrounded in Furtherfield's 
Visitors Studio.  As I interpret Marc's words, the purposes of interactive 
video on the web - as experienced at Furtherfield - is activist:

"It is not only the people that invent/make the platform and sculpt it, it 
is the community that changes its manner and shape as well, in demanding 
that it changes for their own creative needs."   -- quoted from Marc's post 
on march 7th.

I take this to mean that a group of people sees itself taking shape around 
a more or less stable pattern of possibilities, grounded in a dynamic 
process rather than in a group identity.  The benefit of this collaborative 
intentional process is the ability of the group to morph itself over time....

...that is, as long as the group remains within the closed environment of 
the Visitor Studio.

So, I would not necessarily call this "community-building" because of the 
closed system.  Yet Marc invokes community as integral to the Visitors Studio.

How does the public-space dimension of the web shift the performativity of 
the viewer?  Is it only between these 2 alternatives:

Alternative 1. -- "reflective" interactivity (Nicolas Clauss' collaborative 
works, including "Pianographique", being a powerful example)

Alternative 2. -- collaborative interactivity, where a community is 
presumed and integral (as in Furtherfield)

In contrast to these, "C-SPAN Karaoke", and downloadable interactive video 
software such as "HF Critical Mass", depend on a pre-existing group that is 
familiar with several overlapping conversations/discourses.  "CSPAN 
Karoake" and "HF Critical Mass" are performative, just as dependent upon 
social context as the Visitor Studio at Furtherfield, yet share neither the 
desire to do community-building nor the alternative attention to 
"reflective" modes of interactivity.

Performativity (and intentionality) depends on error.. e.g., it is "wrong" 
to sing pop tunes as accompaniment to public-policy videos (as in cspan 
karaoke); or it is "wrong" to open-source an aesthetic that is 
by-definition open source as soon as it is embodied in a work of art such 
as Hollis Frampton's film "Critical Mass" (as in the interactive video 
software "HF Critical Mass").  The performance is in the error, the 
discursive mismatch.

The pursuit-of-error as performance of intentionality - this is what will 
be "interactive" about anything technologically-characterised as 
interactive video on the web.

Barbara