C10: Artistic Interactivity in Hybrid Networks

Synopsis

The results of the previous phase of the research project Transcriptive Interaction and current debate about media art raise the following question:

Can we state a phase of change, which is characterized by the emergence of a new art form that dissolves traditional relations between artwork, author, performer and recipient and also shows a high potential for aesthetic innovation?

Hence, the project follows two lines of research: on the one hand, specific forms of interaction are discussed in regard to their modes of interactivity. On the other hand, the role of media discourses in the instigation of this modified art form, exemplified by interactivity, is considered.

The fields which are focussed by this project are Artificial Life Art, augmented environments in artistic contexts and interactive audio programming. The media discourses about interactivity that are concerned with those fields we can categorize as emergence, immersion and live coding. As the role of sound in the ongoing changes of media art has been rather neglected up to now, the project focusses on this desideratum for research.

It needs to be investigated whether resp. how these art forms instigate characteristic and constitutive observer positions (e.g. a certain relationship between production and reception). One of the operations which may be used to make such processes of observer instigation accessible ("visible") are the medial differences. Hence, this project examines these processes in terms of the interrelation sound - movement and sound - (program-)text.

The project acts on the assumption that the field of media art can best be explored as a set of operations or actions which take place in dispositives of action in distributed, hybrid networks of actants, where the observer instigation is carried out by specific processes of interaction. The hybridity of these networks is based on their consistance of humans, algorithms/machines and symbols, which are generalized here as actants.

The research aims at detecting those processes and operations of observer-instigation (Beobachter-Instituierung) that are crucial for the interaction forms in this fields.

Therefore, sound - movement-interaction that is studied in the context of artistic applications of Artificial Life and augmented environments, which also imply forms of interaction between autonomous robots and humans. While the movement of physical body is sampled and transformed into a "data body" and recontextualized in dynamic sound space through algorithmic sound synthesis, special interactive relationships between body, movement, algorithmic system and sound arise. In regard to observer instigation, embodiment, situatedness and the operations of turn-taking between acting and being acted upon are to be examined.

While the movement of physical body is sampled and transformed into a data "body" and recontextualized in dynamic sound space through algorithmic sound synthesis, specific interactive relationships between body, movement, algorithmic system and sound arise. In regard to observer instigation, embodiment , situatedness and the operations of turn-taking between acting and being acted are to be examined.

To analyze interactive audio programming relations between elements of this interaction form come into focus: How the computer language mediates between the programmer's imagination and the algorthmic process, how algorithms act as cause of acoustic phenomena, and how different programmers use code to exchange their models of these processes. The operations in the computer are not visible directly and the possibility of observation is brought into play by various phenomena, such as the discourse (in computer-language as well as in conversation) and various forms of Störung. Amoungst these disturbances we are expected to find programming mistakes, time delays / interruptions to misinterpretations due to the difficulty of clearly attributing the causation of emergent phenomena in audio programming networks.

Regarding the aspect of interactivity, scientific, artistic and technological media discourses which react on the medial Zweckoffenheit / of undetermined purpose are being examined for their strategies of argumentative establishment and their role for the constitution of changing art forms.