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The aesthetics of interactive artifacts: thoughts on performative beauty

Published: 19 September 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Nowadays aesthetics and the notion of beauty play an increasingly significant role in interactive art and design products, and consequently in scientific research in these fields. This paper outlines a rudimentary theory of the notion of beauty in interactive artifacts. My argument takes as its starting point Kant's definition of the sentiment of beauty as an act of judgment. This judgment unfolds at two very different but interrelated levels. The first level consists of the participant's physiological aesthetic judgment of the digital system's output. This judgment determines the participant's next (inter-)action and is the basis for performative 'flow'. At the second level beauty is seen as an emergent phenomenon that manifests itself as a reflective sentiment, i.e. as a result of the interplay between already experienced 'flow' and the idea of the interactive artifact's potentiality. The idea of potentiality is on the one hand an intrinsic part of the artificial interaction system (an interactive artifact), but on the other hand is experienced as a transcendental phenomenon that appears to overcome the rigid limits of algorithmic systems. The present paper concretizes my theoretical findings by analyzing two very different interactive artifacts: David Rokeby's Very Nervous System from the early days of digital interactive art and the online community 'Second Life' as an example of a virtual meeting place.

References

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Adorno, Theodor, Ästhetische Theorie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1973
[2]
Baumgarten, Alexander Theoretische Ästhetik Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, 1988
[3]
Berlyne, Daniel Aesthetics and Psychobiology Appelton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1971
[4]
Bertelsen, Olav Criticism as an Approach to Interface Aesthetics NordiCHI'04, Tampere, Finland, Copyright 2004 ACM
[5]
Cassirer, Ernst: An Essay on Man; Yale University Press 1992;
[6]
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper and Row, New York, 1990
[7]
Deleuze, Gilles, Repetition and Difference, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994
[8]
Heinrich, Falk Transiente Kommunikationsystemer dissertation, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, 2005
[9]
Kant, Immanuel Kritik der Urteilskraft Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1979
[10]
Luhmann, Niklas Soziale Systeme Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1984
[11]
Massumi, Brian, Parables for the virtual, Duke University Press, Durham&London, 2002
[12]
Norman, Donald Emotional Design Basic Books, New York, 2004
[13]
Rokeby, David The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content i Dodsworth, Clark "Digital Illusion: entertaining the Future with High Technology", ACM, 1998
[14]
Schaeffer, Jean-Marie Art of the Modern Age, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000
[15]
Shusterman, Richard Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal published in: 'Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism' no. 57, 1999
[16]
Turkles, Sherry Life on the Screen Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995
[17]
Zeki, Kawabata 2004 Neural Correlates of Beauty Journal for Neurophysioly 91, 2004
[18]
Welsch, Wolfgang Undoing Aesthetics SAGE Publication, 1997
[19]
Wright, Peter; McCarthy, John Technology as Experience MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004

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  • (2011)3D interactions between virtual worlds and real life in an e-learning communityAdvances in Human-Computer Interaction10.1155/2011/6842022011(1-11)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2011

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  1. The aesthetics of interactive artifacts: thoughts on performative beauty

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    DIMEA '07: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Digital interactive media in entertainment and arts
    September 2007
    212 pages
    ISBN:9781595937087
    DOI:10.1145/1306813
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 19 September 2007

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    1. aesthetics
    2. beauty
    3. interaction

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    • (2011)3D interactions between virtual worlds and real life in an e-learning communityAdvances in Human-Computer Interaction10.1155/2011/6842022011(1-11)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2011

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