Some Questions Regarding the Nature of Experience and Interaction in Media

Abstract

Our relationship to and use of media is predicated on it helping us develop a sense of self within the context of our society. This is both a technological and ontological issue. If we turn to media theory, we can start to understand how the development of various media leads us to different types of engagement. Some are more intellectual; some merely diversion and others are deeply personal. What is not looked at is how does the form of the medium contribute to a more resonant and personal media experience.

In order to answer this question, we need to look at our relationship with media through the filters of media form and how it determines personal experience. With the understanding that a mediated experience has the potential to be as formative as a lived experience. Primarily through creating a relationship to the world through otherness. Different media will present such an experience to greater or lesser extent. Here I would like to look at various media from photography through to gaming and mixed-reality and analyze them through a framework defined by Roland Barthes stadium and punctum as well as Marshall McLuhan’s idea of hi and low-definition media (hot and cold). By doing this we will be looking at the idea of interaction in a different manner, moving away from reaction as a definition of interaction to one where the work becomes a space of personal memory or emotion.