This post has been imported from the NML Research Blog…

After having the pleasure of speaking with a few of you I wanted to post something on interactivity in hopes of starting a discussion. As Joan mentioned in her last post, many of us are engaged in collaborative and participatory inter arts projects - and as such the degree of interactivity our projects should/could afford is something worth pondering.

I’ve been writing a paper on the 2005 Mayoral Election here in NYC (almost done!), focusing on how the candidates used virtual space to communicate with and organize individuals. What I’ve found is that ALL of the candidate websites talked a lot about “interactivity” and employed an “interactive” aesthetic - but in no way allowed actual interactivity between the campaign and the visitor, the website and the visitor or among visitors. Essentially all of the mayoral campaigns used virtual space much like TV - to broadcast information, and not as a space for interacting with or organizing people.

Having done a lot of work in children’s media I was a little stunned by this. Currently, most of the children’s media world is very interested in being more interactive with their audience - but find themselves severely limited by what the television medium affords. Turn on Sesame Street or Blue’s Clues and you will see the characters asking the audience to do different things or ask the audience a question and then pause for a response - all of this is simulated “interactivity” because there are few ways, through TV, to actually see/hear/respond to the audience. This of course isn’t the case with a 2-way medium such as the internet - so why haven’t more people (such as mayoral candidates) embraced this? Answer, CONTROL.

After reviewing (post-election) interviews with the candidate’s staff, its clear that they choose to offer a simulated “interactivity” rather than real interactivity because they wanted to tightly control their ‘message.’ It was their campaign to run, not the people’s (or so they believed!).

Speaking with Paul and Nathan I had a ‘breakthrough’ of sorts by realizing how universal this problem is - in making ‘new media’ we all must wrestle with the problem of simulated “interactivity” vs actual interactivity.

How much control are we willing to turn over to our audience? And what degree of participation do we want our media to foster? What do you think?