Abstract
In this chapter we explore the experience of interactive system-based artworks that exhibit autonomous behaviours in an interactive context. Engaging with such autonomously behaving works opens up experiences that are more akin to conversing, performing, or negotiating. We introduce cybernetic influences and take a closer look at the performance of the participant/machine system. Following this, we discuss the ways in which artists approach working with adaptive systems and observe audiences to iteratively improve their system designs. At the core of the chapter is a discussion of five artworks that serve as our case studies: two influential works: Edward Ihnatowicz’s The Senster and Ken Rinaldo’s Autopoiesis, and three projects developed by the authors: Uzume, Accomplice and Zamyatin. We use these case studies to explore the artists’ approach to autonomy, how it shapes the audience’s experience and the methods used in the development and evaluative process.
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Notes
- 1.
Such complexity, for example, may be captured by the formalisation of digital art systems by Cornock and Edmonds (1973), including the category ‘dynamic interactive (varying)’ in which the conditions of interaction change over time. The works described here are most likely to fit this category, but may achieve a complexity of interaction by other means than devising mechanisms for long-term variation.
- 2.
Some dynamical systems can be highly sensitive to initial conditions, such that very small differences in initial conditions can result in very different behaviours, often referred to as the ‘butterfly effect’. Strange attractors are semi-stable, on the borderline between instability and stability and show the unique property that they never travel through space along the same trajectory twice.
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Bown, O., Gemeinboeck, P., Saunders, R. (2014). The Machine as Autonomous Performer. In: Candy, L., Ferguson, S. (eds) Interactive Experience in the Digital Age. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04510-8_6
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