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[Shneiderman
1998] |
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HCI
is an abbreviation of Human-Computer Interface
Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation
and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with
the study of major phenomena surrounding them.
Human-computer interaction arose as a field in the early 1960s from intertwined
roots in computer graphics, operating systems, human factors, ergonomics,
industrial engineering, cognitive psychology, and the systems part of computer
science. Alongside information visualization, another predominant area of
study is the computer interface (GUI --Graphical User Interface) as experienced
in commercial software packages, information driven websites, various computer
operating systems, auto tellers, GUIs are present in any instance of interactive
screen based communication with a human user.
The ultimate
goal of HCI is to enable fluid or intuitive interactions with the particular
computer system in question. In this fluid state the participant would
not have to think about what menu to choose, or which mouse button to
click, but could naturally and fluently perform the necessary actions
to achieve their goals -- the interface would then become transparent.
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This ultimate
goal is broken down into eight golden rules of HCI:
1. Strive for consistency.
2. Provide shortcuts for experts.
3. Offer informative feedback.
4. Ensure closure of tasks.
5. Avoid user errors.
6. Provide easy reversal of actions.
7. Support user control.
8. Reduce memory load. 
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27. |
Anon.
1877, p.123.
Sharpe 1884, p. 172.
Vediovis, 1982, p. 319 |
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| In
the year 1696, the 11yr old daughter of John Shaw, the Laird of Balgarran,
fell victim to one of the most well remembered cases of "demonic possession"
in Scottish History. It resulted in a large number of locals being implicated
as her tormentors, concluding with three men and three women being put to
death on Paisley's Gallow Green on the 10th of June 1697. |
| The
girl's name was Christian. At the time of the proceedings she would have
been regarded as a living illustration of the mighty power of God. She,
an 11yr child, was able to sustain herself against and repel the devil from
her body. |
| Her
concerned family, with the advice of the Church, took Christian to a famous
medical authority, Dr. Brisbane, in Glasgow. Whilst in his surgery, she
spat out a coal cinder, which was said to be as big as a chestnut, and almost
too hot to handle. Dr Brisbane announced that her affliction was preternatural.
What followed were a series of investigations into the community, witch
trials and the subsequent execution of the six guilty people who were said
to have cursed and thus invoked Christian's demonic possession. As grisly
as the resolution of this case was, it seemed to bring to an end the hysteria
in Renfrewshire concerning witches and witchcraft. |
| Through
the passing years, and as society became more sceptical and atheist about
the likes of witches and demons, the character of Christian has come under
close scrutiny, in particular the possible motivations that drove her actions
and caused her "condition". In the early stages of her possession
she was said to have suffered bizarre and gruesome seizures. |
| Below
is a list of examples: |
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Vomiting
items such as straw, pins, eggshells, orange pills, hair, excrement, and
bones. |
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Presenting
violent pinch marks all over her body and wounds caused by some unknown
"invisible" person(s). |
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Falling
into a trance whereby she could at times seem deaf, dumb, blind or dead. |
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Citing
sophisticated theological points from the scriptures, concepts beyond her
artifice. |
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Successfully
predicting the future. |
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Her
body contorting and bending almost double upon herself. |
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Eyes
sinking back into her head until they looked to disappear. |
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Flying
unaided across her classroom. |
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Picking
up her glove from the ground without the use of her hands. |
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The
years passed but the case would not be forgotten.
The first new reading of the events proposed that the 11-year-old Christian
was an impostor [27],
a wicked trickster who faked her ailments and enacted hellish pranks on
gullible audiences. She (perhaps aided by her father) managed to manipulate
both the Church and the Law, causing the deaths of the local community members
out of spite. |
| Another
contemporaneous reading is that Christian was in fact suffering from a then
undiagnosed mental illness resulting in her possible hysteria, her fits
and the "strange" physical feats. |
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"While
the story is bizarre, modern psychiatry could certainly explain Christian
Shaw's condition… she was suffering from dissociative disorder/conversion
disorder, trance and possession disorder; pica of infancy and childhood;
localisation-related (focal) (partial) idiopathic epilepsy…and acute
and transient psychotic disorder." [McDonald & Thom & Thom
1996] |
| But
most recently, using a feminist angle, scholars have investigated the first
hand documentation of the case [McLachlan & Swales 2002.]. These quasi-legal/narrative
documents detailed both the dramatic acts of Shaw's possession and the trial
itself. They uncovered a decisive fact, that these original documents were
written by an anonymous author. To cast further aspersions on the truth
of these historical artefacts -- the documents contained many striking resemblances,
in tone, and language, to the more famous Salem witchcraft outbreak in New
England in 1692 (four years earlier [Rosenthal 1993.]). Is it possible that
the anonymous author had access to and was inspired by the accounts of events
in Salem? |
| These
recent findings lead to many new questions: Was the narrative constructed
to verify the existence of the Devil and thus of God? What could have been
the motivation to leave the texts anonymous? Did anyone gain from this? |
| Whatever
the modus operandi of the author, the narrative has created a legacy (albeit
unknown outside Paisley and select Historians) whereby the prevailing belief
still remains that Christian was a bad, or even evil, manipulative child,
an embarrassment to Paisley history. The fact that as a woman Christian
became one of the earliest recorded Scottish female entrepreneurs (she was
responsible for establishing the Paisley fine thread industry), is little
remembered. What actually happened to the young Christian Shaw and why six
community members were put to death, is unfortunately anyone's guess. The
anonymity of the author has turned the narrative into a fictional space,
into which prevailing social imaginings can exist; the idea of a young educated
evil girl is certainly a seductive archetype... |
| My
personal response on hearing this tale was one of curiosity. Something rang
untrue about this 11yr old, daughter of a Laird, who mischievously conned
all these erudite adults. Then the visual aspects of the story -- the eyes
retracting into her head, her body bending double… seemed horrifically
ridiculous and impossible, but my overall intuition led me to feel that
our memory of Christian had been unjustly distorted. Deviant: The Possession
of Christian Shaw is my reconstruction to who I think Christian might
have been, a re-imagining of her world. |
Further
Reading on the wider context, available in electronic format:
http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/witches/reading.html
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What
follows are links to the traces of Christian Shaw's legacy as can be found
today:
Available in electronic format: |
http://www.magictorch.net/witchcraft.htm
(expanded context and detailed
descriptions of the events)
http://www.firstfoot.com/Great%20Scot/christianshaw.htm
(focusing on her professional
live)
http://www.oakleafcircle.org/Renfrew.htm
(lengthy description)
http://fp.ayrshireroots.plus.com/Genealogy/Historical/Bargarrans%20Daughter.htm
(local run website)
http://www.geocities.com/mjjodoin/paisley.htm
(perspective from a possible
relative)
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| Game
like
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| The
below text is a further extended commentary on the generalised outcomes
and issues as revealed by an analysis of the external participants responses
to the Deviant project. |
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Nearly
all of the participants felt that Deviant was in some way game like,
the 'like' suggesting that it was not completely akin to a game (e.g. Rau
 cites a comparison
to the adventure game genre but does not label Deviant an adventure
game). |
Most
acknowledged that another description might be needed to fit the work.
Frasca
uses the phrase "lab for discovery", Amerika
"moving visual
art", Koskimaa
speculates
that the project could be a "toy" and Simanowski
uses the analogies
of a "slideshow / detective story". Lawson
was the most
explicit in acknowledging Deviant as a new game format, seeing the
gaming rationale as being where the "subtleties motivate one to continue
without a clear goal, but knowing that there must be one". |
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| This
confusion over whether Deviant should be understood as a game or
a narrative comes from the many levels in which it acts as a hybrid and
refutes conventionality. Two main opposing characteristics are that firstly
it works on a hiding / revealing and linked premise (a game quality), though
suggests a narrative telling by the structuring of the islands of linear
animation and by the thematically descriptive title. As well as these two
points, the project can also be seen to use repetition as a possible metaphor
e.g. the circular looping within the pop-in windows depicting Christian's
acts of possession. This looping sensibility can be said to be a feature
of Internet art [Manovich,
13]. The two main aspects share a similar
drive towards an end, narratively -- a conclusion, gaming-ly -- achieving
the goal. Interestingly, a discussion already exists as to whether quantifiable
outcomes, achieving the goal or endings are a prerequisite of being understood
as a game. Games designer Eric Zimmerman recently stated, "A game is
a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules,
that results in a quantifiable outcome." [49]
In contrast, Greg Costikyan (also a games designer who believes in open-ended
outcomes) defines a game as "a form of art in which participants, termed
players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens
in the pursuit of a goal." [Costikyan 1984.] Sitting in the middle
is Jesper Juul with his "Classic Game Model" (a model for games
that were dominant from 3000 BC to approximately 1970 AD and during that
historical period proposes Juul, nearly all "games" had outcomes),
which states: "A game is a rule-based formal system with a variable
and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different
values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the
player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity
are optional and negotiable." Juul by using a demarcated timelines
suggests that contemporary rule-based systems can be something "other"
than the classic model [Juul 2003.]. |
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| Within
Deviant, the endpoint serves to reposition the participant back towards
confusion, as seen from a gaming viewpoint. The conclusion to the project
does not offer participants an understanding of their role, of what the
project's ultimate goals are. It does clarify its narrative source, explaining
what has been visually experienced. It does something "other"
than offer a narrative or gaming ending. |
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This newness
or refusal to be categorised saw some of the participants attempt a general
description of the project: exploratory narrative (Fifield
), visual narrative
(Walker ),
interactive experiment in moving visual art (Amerika
), and interface/game/interactive
environment
(Lawson
).
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"The
images and the feeling of the interactivity work together well to create
a sense of disturbance…" (Montfort
). |
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"Don't
look for the aesthetically pleasing here; rather, witness the anti-aesthetic
leaking (of emotion, confusion, visual dyslexia, uncertainty)" (Amerika
). |
As
previously
laid out  , my
practice sets out to offer a different type of experience than is commonly
found within commercial easy to use interactive exchanges. This ideal can
be seen to follow Stuart Moulthrop's Interstitial paradigm [48].
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| I
am interested in creating artworks as opportunities by which the participant
can explore and experience digital emotion. The main method by which I do
this is by creating a sense of disturbance. This refers to an emotional
unbalance. I believe that a participant will have an immediate automatic
reaction to such a context, involving emotions such as excitement, fear,
curiosity, and, most importantly, a need to seek out the root cause of the
disturbance -- to either put a stop to the unease or simply to understand
why it exists. This belies the larger belief that a disturbed environment
is negative and the order of things should be balanced. |
The
emotion of disturbance has long interested me.
Specifically within Deviant, this sense of disturbance is from the
inherent difficulty of understanding the project, how it functions, what
its narrative is and what your position as participant will be. It is also
supported by the aesthetic choices such as the hand drawn line art nature
of the representational style. The rendering created a sense of innocence
for some participants as they linked this style with a childlike worldview
(Koskimaa ,
Fifield )
and this combined with the dark narrative background (as offered by the
sound effects on the first reading) and then by the narrative elucidation
on any second or more readings, creates a strong sense of dissonance. |
| The
desire to uncover the reasons why Deviant has an uncomfortable or
sad atmosphere is a useful and compelling tool to drive the participants'
commitment to reach the end of the project (traditionally when all is revealed).
This as mentioned by some of the participants (Simanowski and Walker) is
akin to being exposed and an active participant in a mystery novel [4].
The need to know helped embolden some of the participants' resolve when
faced with the inevitable frustration and confusion, driving them on to
reach the end.
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