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)