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DESIGN:
The
interaction between individuals operating as part of a distributed
group within the Panopticon relies on the development of a social
space within which human exchange can take place. This is as much
a psychological space, as it is a technological one. The interaction
of individuals within this system generates a 'social' space,
which, according to Harré (1985),
is the ÔspaceÕ where understanding and knowledge are exchanged,
and learning takes place.
It
is anticipated that this space allows individuals to externalise
their 'inner worlds' to generate a ÔspatialÕ consciousness. Participants
within the Panopticon (its space and time) require a new nomenclature.
They are no longer an 'audience', such a definition is too passive.
Telematic activity, as Sermon (1997)
says, "is nothing without the presence and interactions of the
participants who create their own television programme by becoming
the voyeurs of their own spectacle."
Turley
(1997) identifies the term "spect-actor" to define "forms in which
members of the audience cross, ultimately consciously cross the
boundary between watching and taking part in the action."
Since the
mid eighties multimedia has promised to offer a synthesis of traditional
media forms. The desire for a synthesis of media experiences is
not new. These traditional media forms were, from their inception,
seen to offer a similar integration. In 1946 Lazlo Moholy-Nagy,
artist and Bauhaus lecturer, spoke of a new vision provided by
these new forms, 'Vision in Motion'.
"-seeing,
feeling and thinking in relationship and not as a series of isolated
phenomena. It instantaneously integrates and transmutes single
elements into a coherent whole".
(Moholy-Nagy, 1946, p12)
This vision,
however, manifested itself in black and white photographs and
film, kinetic sculptures and constructivist paintings. In real
terms the 'coherent whole' was in the eye of the beholder, an
intellectual eye, the eye of a modernist with a preference for
objectivity over subjectivity. This vision was part of the dominant
cultural aspiration to be free from traditions of the past, and
to embrace new forms. And from the start these new forms were
seen to have social and educational roll to play.
"In
the photograph must learn to seek, not the 'picture', not the
aesthetic of tradition, but the ideal instrument of expression,
the self-sufficient vehicle for education."
(Moholy-Nagy, 1936, Telehor 1,no.2)
As a result
of this cultural/media revolution we have had, in the space of
around fifty years, a massive upheaval in the distribution and
consumption of media forms, from film and photography, to radio
and television, the growth of monumental international institutions
and a plethora of knowledge and understanding about the workings
of media forms.
It is not
for this section to retell the history of Twentieth Century media
forms. It is important to realise, however, that new media forms
do have a heritage, and that we are so used to seeing the media
as part of our daily environment that most of people take the
complexity of its language and technology for granted. It is also
important to realise that most of the knowledge and understanding
of these media forms has been used to 'make' media, so that unlike
scientifically based disciplines little effort is generally made
to articulate the processes employed in media creation. Indeed
the intent with many media forms is to bypass the a viewers objectivity
and generate an experience. As Messaris points out:
"But
images, as I have labored to show, are substantially analogic
representations of the things they stand for, and this distinction
has a very crucial implication. It means that in principle, images
are capable of representing the entire range of variation in a
realm of experience and need not collapse this range into a more
limited number of categories."
(Messaris, 1994, p26)
In order
to fully grasp the power of new media we must therefore reexamine
and articulate traditional media. Not so that they may be re-structured
in digital form, but in order to re-articulate their visual/temporal
language. For Human Computer Interaction, there is a real need
to integrate this knowledge with existing knowledge of the human
understanding afforded by computing.
Multimedia
enables new affordances. Its elements have an established vocabulary,
and a discourse can be found to describe the integration of these
elements. Sergei Eisenstien (1898-1948) theories of montage, for
instance, can adequately accommodate the convergence of these
media forms (Metric Montage, Rhythmic Montage, Suspension of Time,
Shock Attraction, Tonal Montage, Cutting to Form, Overtonal Montage).
Film semiotics, from Structuralism to poststrucuralism, spanning
textual analysis, Grand Syntagmatique, focalisation and filtration,
psychoanalytical film theory, intertextuality and transtextuality,
offers a language to articulate and understand the non objective
complexities of time based imagery. How could the film described
in following extract be evaluated objectively?
"The
images have no narrative meaning, they are rather a series of
visual stimuli intended to create a psychological drama within
the viewer, 'rousing the mind by osmosis without verbal transposition'."
(Curtis, 1972, p29)
The novelty
of multimedia must surely be interactivity. Whilst we are not
providing a new descriptive vocabulary within the work described
here there is a visual/temporal vocabulary being defined. There
is a whole new field of debate and inquiry being opened up by
interactive multimedia, which requires intellectual contribution
from all domains. This field, whilst opening up avenues for new
debate, also offers new interpretations of old issues. For instance,
the notion that the camera can be objective, and the photograph
a representation of the truth, has been rejected well before the
advent of digital media. As Sontag points out, it is the subjective
nature of any image that gives it its power.
"The
camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque. It is a view
of the world which denies interconectedness, continuity, but which
confers on each moment the character of mystery. Any photograph
has multiple meanings; indeed to see something in the form of
a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination.
The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: "There
is the surface. now think-or rather feel, intuit- what is beyond
it, what the reality must be like if it looks that way." Photographs,
which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations
to deduction, peculation, and fantasy."
(Sontag, p23, 1977)
It may not
be desirable in a learning environment to present the user with
images that undermine the authors perspective, or it may be desirable,
as in the MLEs described here, to show multiple perspectives.
In these situations the role of narrative and information integration
is greatly enhanced by the 'active-media' layering. The affordances
offered by interaction can be used to explores the information
surrounding the narrative, and the narrative itself, and still
sustain the suspension of disbelief.
Our general
level of media sophistication allows the average television viewer
to drop in and out of narratives, mix documentary with fiction,
look at and around the screen, without leaving the media flow,
simply by flicking channels. The extra layers of inquiry offered
by the MLE described in this paper provide an augmented narrative
structure that provides new insights for learners. The 'coherent
whole' promised by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy is being realised by this
integration of media, narrative form, and information. The 'unified
image' identified by McLuhan below provides a suitable focus for
the potential of this new media form.
"our
very word "grasp" or "apprehension" points
to the process of getting at one thing through another, of handling
and sensing many facets at a time through more than one sense
a a time. It begins to be evident that "touch" is not
skin but the interplay of the senses, and "keeping in touch"
or "getting in touch" is a matter of a fruitful meeting
of the senses, of sight translated into sound and sound into movement,
and taste and smell. The "common sense" was for many
centuries was held to be the peculiar human power of translating
one kind of experience of one sense into all the senses, and presenting
the result continuously as a unified image to the mind. In fact,
this image of a unified ratio among the senses was long held to
be the mark of our rationality, and may in the computer age easily
become so again."
(McLuhan,1964, p60)
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