In Other Worlds: Networked Collaboration October 25, 2011 – Week 8

6 Theses of Art in Virtual Worlds There are six aesthetic-technological dimensions that collectively distinguish the art of virtual worlds from earlier forms of art.  immersion,  interaction,  artificial agency,  ambiguity of identity,  environmental fluidity  networked collaboration

Networked Collaboration  Because virtual worlds reside on servers connected to the Internet, they offer unprecedented opportunities for networked collaboration among artists as well as between artists and audiences. Such collaboration can involve formidable organizational and aesthetic problems, but never before has art been capable of such globalized collectivity.

Jenkins – notable points  Media systems consist of communication technologies and the social, cultural, legal, political, and economic institutions, practices, and protocols that shape and surround them.  Interactivity is a property of the technology, while participation is a property of culture.  Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways.

Jenkins – New Literacies  Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving  Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery  Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes  Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Jenkins – New Literacies cont’d  Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content  Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.  Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities  Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Jenkins – New Literacies cont’d  Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources  Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities  Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information  Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Categories of Interaction in Art - Candy Static  The art object does not change and is viewed by a person.  There is no interaction between the two that can be observed by someone else, although the viewer may be experiencing personal psychological or emotional reactions.  The artwork itself does not respond to its context.  Most common in art galleries and museums where art consumers look at a painting or print, listen to tape recordings and talk to one another about the art on the walls and, generally speaking, obey the command not to touch.

Categories (cont’d) Dynamic-Passive  The art object has an internal mechanism that enables it to change or it may be modified by an environmental factor such as temperature, sound or light.  The internal mechanism is specified by the artist and any changes that take place are entirely predictable.  The viewer is a passive observer of this activity performed by the artwork in response to the physical environment.

Categories (cont’d) Dynamic-Interactive  All of the conditions of the dynamic passive category apply with the added factor that the human ‘viewer’ has an active role in influencing the changes in the art object.  Motion and sound capture techniques can be used to incorporate human activity into the way visual images and sounds are presented.  The work ‘performs’ differently according to what the person does or says. There may be more than one participant and more than one art object.

Categories (cont’d) Dynamic-Interactive (Varying)  The conditions for both 2 and 3 above apply, with the addition of a modifying agent that changes the original specification of the art object.  The agent could be a human or it could be a software program. Because of this, the performance of the art system cannot be predictable. It will depend on the history of interactions with the work.  Either the artist updates the specification of the art object or a software agent learns from the experiences of interaction automatically modifies the specification. In this case, the performance of the art object varies.

Interaction in Art and Technology  Cornock and Edmonds: rather than talk about ‘artworks,’ it is helpful to think of ‘art systems’ that embraced all of the participating entities, including the human viewer.  The role of the artist is not so much to construct the artwork, but rather to specify and modify the constraints and rules used to govern the relationship between audience and artwork as it takes place in the world.  The artist is transformed from an art specialist in creating artworks to a catalyst for creativity.  All things ‘which process art data... are components of the work of art’. So by that definition, the audience is part of the artwork.

Interaction in Art and Technology  Artists who seek out new digital techniques, usually need to collaborate with people from different fields and of varying levels of expertise to develop the technology to a level where it can deliver the desired result.  The mapping of artistic goals and intentions to digital methods often requires transformations not only in the technical solutions but also in the artist's thinking  In art and technology environments, we need environments for building environments.

Critical Questions  Artists tend to keep the audience on a tight leash when it comes to deciding what the audience group should control, because of this they inevitably run into technological limitations with how the software allows the audience to assume control and interact. The interactivity in a majority of pieces on display has had an element of adding your avatar into their “image”. However, is this true interactivity or is it just a device for the changing and locking of viewing angle? How does a limited amount of interactivity within an art piece take away from the immersion of the audience? Explain why. Eugene Myslinsky

Critical Questions  In this weeks reading Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, they discuss the term "projective identity" which refers to the integration that happens between the user and their avatars and the personas that they take in the game. How does projective identity affect one's performance and simulation in a virtual environment? - Esther Ahn

Critical Questions  "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture" talks about how digital artists have to cooperate with programmers and computer technology, and vice versa. How do you feel the growing relationship between artists and programmers will change the artistic process? Anthony Condarcuri