[-empyre-] Buttons and Actions (was: practice as a means towards academic self-criticism / research as a curatorial enterprise)

[Lasse Scherffig]

And another one...

Birringer:
> PS.  Lasse, what does it mean to say: "I use Cybernetics to  argue that interfaces are "enacted" through use as much as they are  the designed a priori of interaction"?  please can you talk more about this argument?  Are interfaces not necessarily enactive or enacted, otherwise we would not know them, in a social and experiential sense as interfaces;  one cannot program an interface, only design potentials of interaction through certain dramaturgies, or product designs or architectures that enable use and adaptation?

You are right: in a social or experiential sense this argument must not 
even be stated. I rather aim at a low-level (perceptual) understanding, 
much in line with von Foerster's argument about "Objects: tokens for 
(eigen-) behaviors" but also relating to contemporary neuroscience (and 
evidence for action-to-perception transfer and common coding). While HCI 
would assume that interfaces are shaped by a designer (e.g. placing 
buttons on a screen) and "read" by a user (clicking on it), I try to 
show that this is only one side of the story. The other is that buttons 
only exist through being treated and reacting as such, and that this 
also holds perceptually: Within how we perceive an interface our own 
expectations (that have been gradually built up) become literally (i.e. 
perceptually) manifest. This can be clearly shown for border cases of 
action-perception couplings (such as controlling visual illusions) but I 
think it is active in the whole process of interacting (and Svanaes: 
"Understanding Interactivity" already gives some empirical evidence for 
this). Although this most of the time is camouflaged by the extensive 
training with computer games and PCs we all were subject to and through 
which we have learned to take buttons for granted.

Menotti:
> The game “functions”, but can it be /played/? And if it can’t, is it
> still a game?

And also the other way round: if it functions as a servomechanism, was 
it ever a game? (I guess here "the aspect of social agreement that is 
present in traditional gaming", mentioned by Heckman, comes into play).

Menotti:
> (And: is this relation between “functionality” and “playability” in
> any form analog to the one between “conceptual structure” and “names”
> above?)

Makes me think of the classic game studies debates about "ludus" and 
"narrative". I would opt for a complicated relation, oscillating between 
mastering feedback loops and creating meaning(?) inside them (which will 
affect action again).

Good morning!
Lasse.