Coincidence does not exist, only consequence.

To summarise today and my current thoughts.

In a conversation with Micheal many interesting issues were raised surrounding high and low interactivity. Chris Crawford suggests the more interactive a media experience, the better. Specifically referring to digital media and computer games he argues,

"The more we emphasize interactivity in our designs, the more fully we utilize the true strength of the computer as an artistic medium."

This i certainly agree with, however my hang-up lies with the ungrateful audience. Our spoilt Postmodern society, especially our Generation Text, are far too accustomed to instant gratification. They do not appreciate the formulation of such vast amounts of information that grants them instant entertainment. In my notes from Alister McDonald (Kerb lecturer) i mentioned the paradox fo Flash games and their immediacy to the user, and the time and effort it requires to create and code them. This point is relative to all digital media and recent computer games. Consider the fact that it can take upto 3 years to produce an XBox 360 or PS3 game and yet only 50 hours for the player to complete it. This reminds me of "The Way Things Go" by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, a 100 foot installation of physical interactions and chemical reactions, which inspired the Honda Cogs advert and latest Guinness advert i referred to earlier. They all beautufully demonstrate the idea of causality, but the real relevance is the point that the authors would have taken months to prepare the sequence and yet a mere second of interaction for the reader to trigger the potentially 30 minute cause and effect process, which is a very impressive and captivating spectacle.

Micheal and i also discussed the idea that high interactive media forces the audience to engage with it. Imagine back to the 1930's - 1940's when TV had just become commercially available. During that time of the technology it was a simple case of switch on the 1 channel, sit back and absord the information presented. Now with such cast choice and control of what we watch it is a far more active, participatory, thought-through experience. The viewer is coerced into interactivity without being aware of it, because that is the very nature of digital media. As computer games become more advanced, as does the audiences interaction with them, We are seeing increasingly complex patterns of thought and reaction, problem and solution.