[-empyre-] interactivity and Digital Futures

[Timothy Murray]

>Johannes,

If I read between the lines, I sense that your 
"resolution" would be for "interactivity" to 
respond to social questions about "how to care to 
act, how to give and how to receive" but that you 
are pessimistic about this possibility.  While 
"interactivity" could surely result in non-social 
behavior, I suspect that a good many subscribers 
to -empyre- are invested in new media platforms 
precisely for their social promise, whether it be 
through "critical spatial practice," "eco-art," 
"tactical media," etc.

We would be very interested in receiving more 
resolutions that detail the possibility of such 
practices.

Best,

  Tim and Renate



>A few years ago it seemed inevitable that digital
>culture and new media arts would
>be based on interactivity and the paradigm
>changes implied by participatory play/ creativity
>and networking. The promise of a new aesthetics
>of interaction made me think that technically
>derived interface performances could adopt the
>digital into social processes that also taught us
>new techniques of behavior, new "acting"
>techniques. So over the past few years, my lab in
>Germany has been trying to publish a manifesto on
>"interaction"
>(http://interaktionslabor.de/manifesto.htm).
>While we try, we also become more disillusioned.
>In the new year, I want to examine why
>interactivity (the technical kind) is not
>working. And why the growth of virtual reality,
>gaming environments and second lives does not
>answer any social questions about how to care to
>act, how to give and how to receive.
>
>
>
>(bio)
>
>Johannes Birringer (UK)  is a choreographer and
>media artist. As artistic director of the
>Houston-based AlienNation
>Co.(www.aliennationcompany.com), he has created
>numerous dance-theatre works, video installations
>and digital projects in collaboration with
>artists in Europe, the Americas, and China. His
>most recent production, the digital oratorio
>Corpo, Carne e Espírito,  premiered in Brasil in
>2008. He is founder of Interaktionslabor
>Göttelborn in Germany
>(http://interaktionslabor.de) and director of
>DAP-Lab at Brunel University, West London, where
>he is a Professor of Performance Technologies in
>the School of Arts. His new book, Performance,
>Technology and Science, was released by PAJ
>Publications in 2008.
>
>--
>Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
>Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
>Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
>Cornell University
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre


-- 
Timothy Murray
Director, Society for the Humanities
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853