INTERACTIVE LIFE (a work in progress)

INTERACTIVE LIFE maps out a fluid sense of who we are.
Confrontations become chances to cooperate. Monopolies yield to diversification.
Centralized systems give way to democracies.
Victories are excuses to celebrate. Defeats are pauses to retool.

An interactive perspective restores a playful flexibility
which helps navigate creatively in a complex world
along the directions of our dreams.

An interactive approach can be used anywhere.
It is more difficult yet more far reaching than a classical approach.
Classically, goals are pictured as fixed
But imagine that goals shift in time.

Of course, some things lend themselves better to objectification:
a stone is more objective than a flower blooming. But this is only a matter of time scales.
Stones bloom as well. Continents shift. The solar system is not necessarily stable.
An objective approach confuses the snapshot for the living picture.
An interactive approach looks at the changing side of things.
The fascinating question is: are we missing much of life by rendering the world objective,
by closing artificial borders, by holding on to dogmas?

Interactivity is basic to language, art, commerce & others delights which make us human.
Our growing ability to model and simulate with computers
is only now starting to open this brand new field of inquiry.

What could be the main features of an interactive perspective? Consider these four:

• Invites play

The world is our playground. Gently we must play.
When we stop playing, something deeply human dies in us.
Play can be constructive. It takes hard work to play well and enjoy it too.
For more on play see the page on Jean Piaget and the page on flow.

• Is a catalyst for emergence

Does the design come first and then the creation?
Or could creation make itself up as it emerges?
This second option is a radical departure from previous philosophies
Call it perhaps a new existentialism, pragmatic, playful, interactive

• Favors a concert of points of views even if contradictory

Since we can't even assume that the universe is based on a preexisting plan of any sort
Then we cannot exclude multiple views as long as they work
This should cut down on fights about who is right and who is wrong
What we choose depends on what we like among the many options which work

• Tends to be practical

Our creations are fictions, from physics to philosophy, and everything in between
All work in their own ways and that is truth
Truth that cannot be shared and put to good use is nothing at all
But you don't have to take my word for it. Check the page on pragmatism

(for a longer version check my paper "Reflections about Interactivity" at M.I.T.)

 

Some irresistible interactive tendencies:

• Diversify (cast the net wide)

• Tinker (reassemble components in new ways)

• Reflect (readjust course continuously through feedback)

• Link (reach out and reach in)

• Trade (give at least as much as received)

• Build (with openings and other connective features)

• Explore (without preconceived outcomes)

• Enhance (select options with greatest distributed value)

• Transform (change in continuity)

• Celebrate (treasure diversity in concert)

THE INTERACTIVE WAY   version 1.1 - 9/9/99 (modified 1/31/00)

• Interactivity is as old as art (as old as science, as old as life)

• And as young as the web where all is next to everything else (as young as the primordial digital soup)

• Life is interactivity. Death is not (it's that simple?)

• Products & things are whirlpools that come and go in interactive flows (like reflections & truths)

• Metamorphosis rules (so do Murphy's rules)

• Laws are very practical human creations (they facilitate and manage interactions)

• Play is the thing (we are how we play, we are the games we choose)

• Art, like science, models and simulates life (art deals with the unique, science with repetitions)

• Interactivity celebrates diversity and multiple perspectives
(and we can still treasure our own views)

• Favor paradox over irony (favor curiosity over disdain)

• The complex is more than the sum simple parts (the interactivity of parts is at the heart of complexity and in the end parts may even seem superfluous or interchangeable)

• Emergence is interactive magic (emergence being the creation of the new)

____________________________________________________________
interactive art space      © 2000 by luis o. arata    contents| here | there | everywhere