Topics IMG	

								25 January 1996

Dear img folk,

It would be good if we can each pick a topic that interests us, and volunteer to take responsibility for starting a discussion about it.  This is a grabbag of some topics that people said they might be interested in discussing, based on the final seminar from Fall quarter.   I can't recall everything, and I'm sure this list is pretty haphazard.  Please help -- suggest some topic and the week in which you can lead a discussion. In parentheses, I named people who expressed an interest in the given subject.   Please complain or correct me if you or a favorite topic were left out. We can help assemble some readings/recordings with a couple of weeks of lead time.

								26 January 1996

Dear img folk,

Here's another attempt at a thematic agenda.  I tried to start with a small focus familiar to traditional computer software designers.   This brackets out issues such as interpretive context, audience, politics of design etc.   But it seems that one way to get started is to look at some digital media under a microscope so we can experience firsthand the eyestrain and the (necessary?) myopia that software writers endure.

This then yields to a survey of some particular examples of art and performance, which should inspire questions with an enlarged scope, such as interpretation and manipulation. But we need not stop even at that, which would be the classical limit of concern for the study of literary artifacts.   Especially as media is becoming distributed through network channels, and since designers of very large scale, complex software systems are now appealing to metaphors from urban design, it seems crucial to expand our critical study of media to include social systems.

Architecture and urban design are just one way to segue from "individualist" and dualist theories of interactive media/performance/art to systemic or historicist critiques of interactive technology in the age of the WWWeb.   To me it seems that analyzing "interactivity" between technology and society at this scale would demand discussion of issues such as post-fordist models of production and the multimedia industry, the politics of  technology-mediated "education reform," and the philosophical underpinnings of complex systems theory or object-oriented multimedia software systems.

All this should proceed spirally, so that we'll revisit issues from multiple perspectives.  Along the way, and hopefully as early in the spiral as possible, we'll see examples of working software/art.   But, personally, I hope that we do not lose ourselves in a thicket of examples.   That's why we should try to stick to a thematic agenda, and fit particular demonstrations in the most appropriate moments.   There's no aspiration to a Theory of Everything, just an attempt to let people know what to expect.   Please comment on the agenda, and help focus the themes for this term.  Spring term, I propose that we select one or two topics, perhaps from the undated lists, to explore in depth.

 AGENDA
	 Survey of representations of digital media (January 18, 25)

	 Modality-specific representations and art (February 1, 8, 15; March 7)
		 Theater and narrative (last quarter)
		 Photography
		 Cinema/video
		 Music

	 Interpretation and manipulation  (Feb 22, 29; March 14, 21 )
		 Diagrams
		 Metaphors
		 Structures, models
			Hypermedia logic and semantics
			Topological theories
		 Scripts, software, performable/executable writing
		 Materialities of communication
		Bodies and action

	 Architecture, urban design
		 C. Alexander; N. Negroponte; W. Mitchell
		 Case: SimCity
		 Case: Object-oriented pattern langauge, E. Gamma et al.
		 Politics of design, Michael Sorkin

	 Critiques and framing issues
		Computers and cognition, Winograd
		Designing information technology in the postmodern age, Coyne
		
SCHEDULE

	 Jan 18, Representations of digital media I (Sha Xin Wei)

	 Jan 25 - Representations of digital media II (Sha Xin Wei)

	 Feb 1 - Hypertext etc. (John Keeling)

	 Feb 8 * ALTERNATE LOCATION - A multimedia biography (Diane Middlebrook)

	 Feb 15 - Digital video (?Mark Davis, Charles Kerns)

	 Feb 22 - Logic and semantics of hypermedia (Alan Bush)

	 Feb 29 - Pictorial diagrams (Barbara Tversky) & Visual Languages (Bob Horn)

	 Mar 7 * ALTERNATE LOCATION - Performance (Mark Goldstein and Michael McNabb)

	 Mar 14	

	 Mar 21

TOPICS

Cinema  and  video
	narrative, game, commercial advertisements, music, documentary and news
	(Charles K., Marc D - video
	Karen L. - cinema, interactive narratives)

Music
	performance, composition, theory, notation
	(Mark G., Mike M.) 

Animation
	traditional tools -- analog, electronic tools, eg. Director,3D modeling, etc.; languages -- eg. ScriptX
	(John K., Xin Wei)

Visual representations and languages
	maps, diagrams, text + graphics
	(Bob H., Barbara T.)

Theater and narrative
	(Diane M., Larry F.)

Historical museums, exploratoriums, art galleries and other simulations
	(Sarah, Larry)

Urban design and cyberspace architecture
	C. Alexander, M. Davis, W. Mitchell, N.Negroponte, ...

Geometry and topology of media
	(Xin Wei)

AI and A-life
	Burke, Hayes-Roth, Oz, Alive, ...

Systems theories; framing issues
	(Ben R.)

Logic of hypermedia
	(Alan B.)

Interactive Media: Theory and Technologies of Representation

	19 October 1995

What time?	Thursdays  4-6?, biweekly?

Location?	Sweet Hall conference room 303,   Humanities Annex

		http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~xinwei/pub/img/img.html

Contacts:	AWS -- keeling@leland.stanford.edu, xinwei@leland.stanford.edu
		  WS -- larryf@leland.stanford.edu

What are some themes?	We have been engaged in a preliminary study of issues relevant to
interactive media, hoping to find our way toward a constructive theory of how people compose and inhabit interactive media.

What seems most interesting to us is the way certain fields are yielding unexpected and fruitful clues for practical developments in technology. So, for example. theater may provide models for user-interface design, topology and geometry for media structures, and urban architecture for cyberspace design.

What is an appropriate format? The seminar can have two aspects: (1) regular sessions in which we will present and discuss prepared topics, and (2) a cybernetic space in the form of a shared website which will hold references and media contributed by local and remote participants.

In a typical session, a speaker might discuss a theoretical issue or artifact and situate it with respect to some design problems.  We can have a series of prepared responses to the presentation, as well as some discussion of the practical implications of the theoretical approach for practical issues. The discussion will be presented on the Web and further responses from the community will be invited. The website will also contain a bibliography and selections from the readings.

Topics visited last year (partial list):

	Case study: the flexible classroom.
	Metz's typology for film;
	Lakoff's study of categories; 
	Objectivist semantics, physical symbol system hypothesis, speech act theory, and 
		criticisms (Putnam-Lakoff, Derrida, Pratt)
	Systems theories (Parsons, Luhmann)
	The "design - theory" tension

Some topics emerging from previous seminars.

	apparent dichotomies between design and theory, particularity and abstraction
	objects/artifacts
		design
			theories or ideologies
				rip. da capo...

	Performance
		Music performance (CCRMA  - Chafe?, Goldstein-McNabb?)
		Theatrical performance (Friedlander, Laurel)
		Multimedia art (Slayton)
			Embodied theories of action and meaning (Maturana, Varela, Rosch, M. Johnson)
	Meaning systems, 
		Systems theories
			Topology
			Dynamical systems 
	
	Symbolic  artifacts I: visual representations, meaning (Tversky?)
		Iconic/mimetic vs ideographic systems
		Visual sign languages (written-sign pidgins: Horn)
		Graphic design
		Musical notation

	Symbolic artifacts II: language
		Literature and literary theory (Schnapp?)
		Symbolic architecture and design
			Sociology of design (Winograd,Star, Latour?)

	Symbolic artifacts III: computational artifacts
		Scientific visualization, modeling (Lenoir?, Edwards?)
		Design of data structures, tools vs languages
			Ideologies:
			   Artificial languages: economics, animation - ScriptX
			   Models (Varian; a-life & complexity)
			   Graph metaphor in linguistics, hypermedia (Landow?), AI (Winograd) 
				Metric spaces and differential geometry (Sha)