Amorphous interactivity
 
 
On-Line TEXTS
 

 

 
'How can one distinguis creativity from (mere) novelty, in a way that helps us to understand both the surprise-value of creative ideas and their sometimes startling obviousness?' 
  
Margaret Boden - in: 'creativity and unpredictability'
 
 
 
  A designer of interactive publications will probably make a product that rides the waves of popular culture and design it to - at least - generate an illusion of creativity for the end user. The designer will have moved on to other, even more tempting, over designed techno-debris to engage consumer or institutional interest, just before the cultural fancy of the previous has been completely faded away: this is the exponential escalation of the modern western culture’s addiction to ever-increasing novelty as a substitute for creative and critical engagement. 

Individual people or co-operatives truly concerned with shaping the new media for innovative and cultural application (and this definition doesn't exclude commercial [video game etc.] developers) have a real difficult task: they must identify how technology could create a context for a substantive, interactive experience. They'll have to forge a new type of content - not available in other media - that will teach the spectator how to learn, which can encourage participatory consciousness, which will free the mind rather than entrap it. 

Some guiding clues on this path may be found in the familiar media already available: consider the novel; photography and film / video; theatre and music. In these respective disciplines style and form draw the spectator into an experience of the meaning (the content) of the work. 
However there is a difficulty: style and form that can effectively impact the spectator are culturally - even individually - relative. Perhaps a working definition of a meaningful work is a one that, while rich in content, has a style and form that somehow belongs to another cultural level and requires a considerable commitment to penetrate. While the effort necessary to experience such content could be worthwhile, few people are willing to do so. The promise of immediate and painless engagement is almost a condition, perhaps more than ever, for the spectators interest. 
This 'immediacy' tends to establish an ever increasing gap between the content and the style and form in interactive applications. With 'amorphous interactivity' this gap between style and content could be mediated. There can be a choice to accept that most people must find interactivity easy to use (and to be honest: who wouldn't?) if they are going to use it at all.  If this is a given reality, then the task of amorphous interactivity will be to first engage the spectator with immediacy - and then move beyond it. 
 
  Amorphous interactivity hasn't a typical style or form of it's own, instead it tries to adapt to the 'habits' of an individual 'operator' (i.e. the spectator). It's roughly comparable with 'behaviour learning software' such as under development by XEROX  corporation (and adaptations of this idea among others by Microsoft corporation) to construct user friendly intelligent operating systems and applications for micro-computers. Naturally an amorphous interactivity system would have some default behaviours to start the process. 

The initial draw can be - perhaps must be - simplicity and a linear approach; pulling the spectator into a (new) experience that would otherwise not be engaged. From there, the media would more or less adapt based on its interaction with the spectator, drawing the spectator into greater depth - revealing greater substance. Of course amorphous interactivity could only work with a substantive content, ultimately with the spectator shaping that substance. The interactivity transforms over time from presenting a fixed work - created by an author for a unknown audience - into an interactivity to be defined by the spectator in a learning process to engage creatively with the possibilities of the system. The content is a process: the process of style growing and adapting in a system with the spectator. 

Such interactive processes could have different outcomes from conventional popular media. It could encourage critical thinking and perception, self-awareness, and intellectual development. 
This kind of interactive applications would be in a way analogous to a novel with substantive content that transforms over time until the reader qualifies to influence the outcome of the writing (if he or she chooses to do so...)
 
  The software could be contained in the usual (but probably enhanced) computer environment and for example on the internet (-sites), providing in a human-computer interaction with in principal unending potential. (content could be updated and 'alive' for longer periods of time) With this model of interactive media, it would become possible to create content unachievable in any other form. While applications with this scope aren't yet possible on the internet in the present state of infrastructure, a moderate approach to this kind of organization of media content is already possible; certainly on cd-roms for domestically usage. It's not so much technology but rather an awareness: this is media that is not just about but is the process of creative engagement. In a sense a simple linear approach to interactivity could be prevalent to a designers 'behaviouristic' assumption because it could stand in the way to reveal the content. (assuming there is any) 
 
In order to really implement the 'learning' behaviour in an interactivity system more research in this field is neccessary: by both the designers of human-interfaces and the authors of (instable) content. What this requires is time, commitment, and creativity aimed at transformation of consciousness rather than mere propagation of technological novelty.
 
On-Line TEXTS
 
 
(with regards to Brett Battey's texts on creativity and interactivity)