Art Systems for Interactions between Members of a Small Group of People

Leonardo, Vol. 8, pp. 225-227. Pergamon Press 1975. Printed in Great Britain ART SYSTEMS FOR INTERACTIONS B E W E E N MEMBERS OF A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE* EMeSt Edmonds** 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to discuss a type of art system that involves a small group of people interacting with one another in an activity without set goals. Persons in an unfamiliar situation try to ‘make sense’ of it, even though initially it may appear to consist of random factors. Their major problem is to comprehend the situation in question; some would say that the problem is to discover its logic. But I wish to avoid this notion, as it seems to imply that there is only one way to understand it, whereas in practice different people often make sense of the same situation in different ways. It can be said that when one has learnt how to deal with people one understands their actions, not always in the strict sense of being able to predict them but simply of not being bewildered by them. The idea expressed briefly above has provided the stimulus for undertaking the projects that I shall now describe. But in no sense are the projects based on a theory of cognition (indeed I know of no adequate theory), although participants in one of the projects may be led to question their ideas about cognition. In each project, participants are able to make contact with each other only through very restricted interfaces, i.e. with a very limited set of possible actions and responses. One might say that they try to make sense of the responses that they receive. The responses are such that the participants are likely to understand each other’s actions only partially and even that understanding may be transitory. Certain motivations for constructing interactive art systems have been outlined in Ref. 1. Two of the projects discusses in this paper, ‘Rover’ and ‘Rover #2’, I devised with Stroud Cornock who has described his own theoretical approach to them in Ref. 2. * This article is based on a paper presented at the Computers in the Arts Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland, in August 1973. ** Artist and computer scientist living at 29 Hallfields Lane, Rothley, Leicester, England. (Received 24 May 1974.) 2. Discussion of the projects (a) Proposed ‘Computer 70’project This project was originally proposed to be the central feature of the ‘Computer 70’ exhibition in London in 1970. But it was not carried out and the detailed design of required input/output devices has yet to be specified. It is intended that the system of the project be controlled by a small digital computer. The proposed system provides stations for a maximum of 15 participants and for a minimum of two participants. The stations are arranged such that a participant can see only one, two, three or four stimulus-providing units within his station and a station is part of the group activity only when it is occupied by a participant. Each unit can be acted upon by the participant in response to a given stimulus. No instructions are given to participants on the manner in which the system of units operates. There are 32 units, eight identical units of each of four types. A station is equipped with not more than one of each of the four types. The eight identical units of each set are connected together to form a set network (Fig. 1) that operates in the following way: A reaction by a participant to a Fig. 1. A network for the proposed ‘Computer 70’ art system. 225 226 Ernest Edmonds stimulus from the unit causes a response by all of the units in the network except the one in his station. He, as it were, sends a signal to the other participants who have a unit in this network. Having sent a signal, a station occupant can see only the actions of his units caused by responding signalssent by other participants. Thus, he is in a primitive conversation with them. The work is dependent only upon the reactions of participants to signals received. They may at times manage to control, through their reactions...