# The Ontology of Interactive Art  ## Metadata - Author: [[readwise.io]] - Full Title: The Ontology of Interactive Art - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text explores the nature of interactive art, arguing that it consists of types that become unique through user interactions. It highlights how strongly interactive artworks, like games, allow for different experiences each time, making them distinct from traditional art forms. The author suggests that understanding these artworks requires recognizing the relationship between the interactor's actions and the work itself. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/236826655 ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > This argument ignores the salient virtue of the application of the type- token distinction to art, namely that it allows for dual objects of aesthetic attention. It is possible, indeed usual, to attend simultaneously to properties of a performance r ua performance and to properties of the work per- formed. There is no reason to think we cannot attend to both process and product at one and the same time. The fact that we direct our attention upon interactive processes, or upon our own actions as interactors, does not show that we cannot and do not simultaneously attend to properties of a work-type with which we are interacting. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg9631wemps87s6k2sra6a1)) > For if interactive works are as I have described them, if they have the c›ntcilogy I have prc›posed they have, and if appreciating ancl evaluating them have ducal ‹aspects, then some of our art-theorctic concepts rec uire realignment. One such concept is that of authorship. In the case of music, for ex am ple, it is usual to say that composers bring works inter being by making formative decisions about how their inst‹ances shall sc›und. But this is too narrow. In some cases, creat- ing a work is like creating a game. Some composers create works having an indefini tely large set c›f pc›ssible interaction-instances with different son nd structures. Mc›reover, composing such a work does not rec{uire an aware- ness of the sound structure of every interaction-instance. Composers of interactive works can be surprised by interaction-instances of their works and can thereby learn things about their works in a way that composers of non-interactive music cannot. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg97jj7gpzx1h5ye4arff4j)) > By a work's “structural prop- erties” or (more briefly) “structure” I mean whatever intrinsic or represen- tational properties it has the apprehension of which are necessary for aes- thetic engagement with it — sound sequences in the case of music and narrative content in the case of stories. It should be kept in mind that what is in question here is not the structure of a work as its user *experiences* it, for that is “interactive” in some broad sense for all works of art, but the struc- ture of the work itself. Only the structure of strongly interactive artworks is partly determined by what the interactor does in accessing the work. By contrast, the structure of merely *weakly* interactive works is independent of how that structure is accessed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg6815hxdngng9g1nhsm3jv)) > An explorer may traverse a piece of territory from any of a number of direc- tions, perhaps by following her whim or perhaps by allowing salient fea- tures of the landscape to lead her. Different visits will provide her with dif- ferent experiences of the landscape. However, the landscape itself (its structure) is not constituted by her explorations. There can be partial explo- rations that are partial because something is left unexplored. Most works of art are like landscapes. I may listen to part of a piece of music such that there is some part of the music to which I have not listened. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg6swmatncg7n1vfef4nzvv)) > One might wonder how a game might have gone if one drew three cards instead of two, but this is to con- sider a different playing of the game, not an unplayed part of the game that was played. The next section extends this rough comparison of interactive art works to games. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg6vvewg33qt52bwar1z6aq)) > Even so, they can be roughly ordered into two categories. In one cat- egory fall artworks whose identifying structural features are indicated by an exemplar or model which is copied in order to produce instances of the work. Photographs, prints, and bronze sculptures are examples of works whose structural properties are indicated by models — photographic nega- tives, printing plates, and stones, and the plaster originals used in casting respectively. The second category consists of works of performing art, in- cluding musical works. Their work-identifying structural properties are typically indicated by instructions for performance, such as, in the case of some musical works, a score. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg7786jk8gasdr3ehgdw8bw)) > The playing of a game unfolds in time and consists of a succession of states. Each of these states has properties by means of which we track the progress of the game. The properties of each state of play depend upon ear- lier states of the game and partly determine later states of the game. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg7adrgg44ytj4ew5t2pkmy)) > Thus two inter- action-instances are correct instances of one work provided that they are correctly generated by the same algorithm.*’ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg7dwk7fmj68ystv1n9x553)) > I believe the rationale for attributing to interactive art a type-token ontology must be an aesthetic one. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg7g0ka87n0xjqkwjhzh3c9)) > I therefore suggest that the ontology of interactive art met.st ref1c'ct the' fact that interactors, in fully appreci‹atinp what they are intcracti ng wi th, m ust be respc›nsive not only to aesthetic properties cut interaction-instances but also to aesthetic properties of inte r‹acti ve works themselves, as they ‹are revc‹a lec4 by interaction-instances. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg7mhc8v1w7qysnktwsypz8)) > Saltz defines interactive artworks as those which involve “performative” interactions, those in which “the interaction itself becomes an aesthetic ob- ject” *‹AI,* 123). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jcg7pn38703at6rt12f0s87x))