Lecture3

Interaction is a fundamental human process. Interactivity means the ability to intervene in a meaningful way with the representation itself. Interaction offers the audience choice and places the audience in relation to the given information.

There are two forms of time reference in language:
- Tense: relates to situations taking place in the past, present or future
- Aspect: draws a distinction between perfective (action viewed from the outside as completed) and imperfective (ongoing story, continuing to change)

Digital media offers ways to enter the „imperfect aspect“ with its non-linear and malleable structures. In contrast traditional representations of narrative are ‘perfective’ no matter what you do with them and where you enter them they are complete. Narratives are components of those deep structures with which we construct ourselves and our universe.

There's a difference in values between games and stories. While stories are for adults because they are more serious with an high cultural value, games are for kids because they are more frivolous with a low cultural value. Games are creative activities with rules, boundaries and structure.
They are both object and process; they canʼt be read as texts or listened to as music, they must be played. The creative involvement is a necessary ingredient in the uses of games. You can't play a game and have not some kind of engagement to it. When you don't interact the game isn't happening, but with narrative you don't have to interact.

In this workshop we dealt with conditional design. (Webpage: http://conditionaldesign.org)
Conditional design is a design method formulated by the graphic designers Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey, Roel Wouters and the artist Edo Paulus which foregrounds process over finished products. As a design strategy, it is defined by playfully designed sets of rules and conditions that stimulate collaboration between participants and lead to unpredictable outcomes.

We did 4 different exercises in groups of 4 students and everyone had a different colored pencil. The Exercises were all time limited.
I was in a group with Anni, Melly and Eva. We called ourselves "The Macro Guys".
1. Exercise "The perfect circle"
2. Exercise "Hatching"
3. Exercise "The beach"
4. Exercise "Fluxfold"

In my opinion that was one of the best workshops. It involved group work, helping and inspiring each other. In the end you would always have a completely different outcome but it still looks really artistic and beautiful! I liked it that it was focussing on the playful design process but still involved a set of rules to follow.