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Reflection of the week: Definition of Interactivity

By Jesse van der Merwe,

This is a reflection based, first, on part of the lecture “Interaction and the www” from Interactive Media IIIA (WSOA3028) and, finally, on further research and readings.

Interactivity According To:

Aaron Smuts

Aaron Smuts, Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Rhode Island College [1], believes that the term “interactive” should be considered a “general-purpose term that indicates something about whatever it is applied to, whether that is art, artefact, or nature”. He bases his definition in the notion of “interacting with” something. In Aaron’s paper, “What is interactivity” [2], he develops his theory of interactivity as mutual responsiveness and states that something is interactive if and only if it:

Picture of Aaron Smuts' cover image and profile picture on the website philpeople.org
  1. Is responsive
  2. Does not completely control
  3. Is not completely controlled
  4. Does not respond in a completely random fashion
P.S. Please admire Aaron Smuts' cover image and profile picture from philpeople.org.

Lev Manovich

Dr. Lev Manovich [3]:

  • Presidential Professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
  • Founder and Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab
  • Member of the PhD Program in Computer Science, MS Program in Data Analysis and Visualization and MA Program in Digital Humanities
In his book, “The Language of New Media” [4], Lev states that “as with digital, I avoid using the world interactive in this book without qualifying it, for the same reason – I find the concept to be too broad to be truly useful… Once an object is represented in a computer, it automatically becomes interactive. Therefore, to call computer media ‘interactive’ is meaningless – it simply means stating the most basic fact about computers” [4].

He also proposes that interactivity is an illusion because the choices that a user can interact with have already been programmed into the “interactable” object by a designer. Thus, an experience seems interactive because the user is given a choice, but in reality the user is only following one of the designers preconceived paths through a branching tree structure. [4] Lev calls the concept of true interactivity in new media “teleacton” or “action from a distance” and this can only come from an object that can be influenced in real time.

Espen Aarseth

Espen Aarseth, Professor and Head of Center at the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen. An extract from his book “We All Want to Change the World” [5] goes:

Rather than hiding some obscure theoretical meaning beneath the computer salesman rhetoric, “interactive” has two relatively clear connotations. First, it means computerized, digital, online, etc. Replace any occurrence of “interactive” with “digital,” and the meaning of the sentence changes very little, if at all. The other connotation, following the batch/interactive evolution, is “better.” Implicitly in most uses of the word is the idea that the “interactive” object is simply better than its “noninteractive” counterpart.
He further mentions that he tries to refrain from using the word ‘interactive’, preferring instead to use the term ‘ergodic’. He defines ‘ergodic’ literature as texts where, “nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text” [5].

However, the question of “what is nontrivial” is not an easy one to answer. As explored in the lecture, Gonzalo Frasca expands on the definition of “nontrivial” as “active participations – like clicking or typing – rather than traditional actions associated with reading – like turning pages – which does not modify the shape of the text itself”.

Hanli Geyser

Hanli Geyser, Lecturer in Game Design at the University of Witwatersrand (Head of Department of Digital Arts from 2015-2019), decided to “butcher” these various definitions for us, her students. Her definition is as follows:

Something is interactive if it:

  • Is responsive
  • Does not respond in a completely random fashion
  • Requires non trivial effort
  • Which, in some way, modifies the shape of the text itself
She further explains that it is important to have a working definition for this course (Interactive Media 3A) but it is also just as important to keep trying to make our own personal working definitions.

My Working Definition

First of all, I don’t know. There’s so much information....

I think the most difficult part of a definition for “interactive” relies on the fact that the words within the definition have so many difficulties in their own definitions. Mainly, the word “nontrivial”. If my sister picks up my phone, she is able to navigate and interact with it without any problems. In fact if my 3 year old cousin picks up my phone, he can also navigate and interact with it without any problems. However, my grandmother cannot even get the screen to turn on, let alone tap on the icons to open or navigate an application. This demonstrates how “trivial” things differ from person to person, and thus how easily “nontrivial” things can differ.

I agree with Smuts about how for an object to be considered interactive, it should not respond in a completely random fashion – if there was no possible way to get the required output relatively reliable, or to even predict what a required output could be, then this defeats the purpose of interacting with the object in the first place.

However, I disagree that if the object is in full control of the user, then it is considered not interactive. While this touches on Manovich’s idea that interactivity is an illusion, I think the word “interactive” is too broad to even start considering whether it is an illusion or not. In other words, I don’t think it matters whether the “interactive-ness” is an illusion or not, I think the object is still interactive, even if it unknowingly controls where you are going (if you are aware that you have no control, then this is not interactive). For example; in games, the user gets a sense of interactivity, but the ending of the game is scripted. I don’t think this sense can be in any way discredited but should perhaps be described differently.

If a false sense of interactivity is not considered interactive, then arguably, anything digital is not truly interactive, which is obviously problematic. Again, I think we simply need a new word for “interactivity in which the outcome is controlled/out of our control”. Perhaps “predetermined interactivity” could work as a substitute to provide clarity. Along this same tangent, if the user can completely control the object, I think this is still interactive so long as the object gives some sort of feedback. If it does not give feedback, then I agree that it is not interactive. This leans on Smut’s points 1 and 3.

At this point I definitely think my definition of “interactive” is too narrow as it does not require the text/object to be modified. According to Frasca and Aarseth, if something is “interactive” then it will modify the shape of the text itself through some nontrivial effort. I think Hanli’s definition encompasses everything that is needed for this course (Interactive Media 3A). I really like and thoroughly understand the way she described the different aspects of the word in her definition. I will thus be using Hanli’s definition throughout this course unless I am able to flesh out my definition more – i.e. until it becomes a better worked example that I am more confident in and sure of.

References

  1. A. Smuts, “Aaron Smuts (Rhode Island College) - PhilPeople,” PhilPeople.org, [Online]. Available: philpeople.org. [Accessed 20 March 2020].
  2. A. Smuts, “What is Interactivity?,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 53-73, 2009.
  3. L. Manovich, “Lev Manovich - About Lev Manovich,” manovich.net, [Online]. Available: manovich.net. [Accessed 20 March 2020].
  4. L. Manovich, The Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2001.
  5. E. Aarseth, “We All Want To Change the World,” in Digital Media Revisited, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2003, pp. 415-477.