Users creating their own meaning of the provided interactive piece

[Henrik Flink]

An inteview by Gamereactor with That Game Company's Kellee Santiago about Flower & TGC. 50 seconds into the interview they talk about what feedback they got from players on the game. Later on in the same part they say something like "Not telling the player what to think and feel, but rather let their emotions paint their pictures for them self" and "We want to present an experiance but part of what makes games special is that they are an interactive medium so we really wanted to leave space for the player to bring their own life, their own experiance, their own interpretation"

I really like the idea of this, to really just provide an interactive "base" or "platform" for the user/player so they can create their own "meaning" of the  interactive experiance provided.

This also reminds me of a songwriter called Patrick Park who said a simular thing when he was asked about the meaning of his songs.  Don't remember the quote right off but it went something was something like "He didnt want to tell his meaning of the song to the listeners beacuse it could ruin the relationship between the song and the listener if the meaning of it was definitive from the begining. So he would rather let the listeners create their own interpretation and meaning of the song".

[Michaël Samyn]

All great art is about the reader/viewer/listener/player, not about the creator.

And the interactive medium allows us to really work with that. That's why I would like to see more artists use this medium.

[Dagda]

Inspiration comes from without, meaning comes from within.[/brokenrecord] 

[God at play]

Do you have a link to the video?  It'd be great to watch

[Henrik Flink]

Sorry, forgot to post the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyB3pNvLpnI

[JordanMagnuson]

All great art is about the reader/viewer/listener/player, not about the creator.

I agree with this to a large extent, but not quite to the extreme that you seem to be taking it. I think a lot of the beauty and meaning in art, at least as I have experienced it, comes from a sort of dialog that's created between the creator and the reader/viewer/listener/player.

Personally, I can never completely forget that any created work that I interact with was in fact created by someone; and that knowledge, while it doesn't dominate or determine my experience, always seems to enrich it. Art, for me, is to a large extent about the fact that we're not alone: that there are other people out there, creating things, trying to express things, trying to spread ideas or convey feelings or just make things for the heck of it. That doesn't mean that the meaning of a piece is pre-determined, or that the meaning is even constructed by the creator, but it does mean that the existence of the creator is significant -- at least for me.

The beauty of interactive art, from my standpoint, is that it really opens up the dialog in an explicit way: concedes that the viewer/player really is as much (or more) a part of the dialog as the creator is. We've been saying as much when it comes to literature and other traditional art forms for a long time, but videogames/notgames force the concession to be real (and I find it ironic that so many critics of film and literature etc., who have been espousing the significance of the viewer and the constructed nature of meaning for decades, find it so difficult to accept the idea of interactive artwork).


Oh, and thanks Visiontrick for posting this.

[Michaël Samyn]

I totally agree that the fact that an art work was created by a human is very important. The thing that bothers me is that people often seem to think that the art work is about this particular human, this artist. That the work is about them and about their life and about their opinions. And that experiencing art is about figuring out what the artist was trying to say. In my experience (both as creator and as audience) this is a completely wrong way to approach art.

Art can indeed very often make us feel connected to other humans. But not necessarily to the creator of the piece. He/she is just a channel, a medium, a person who happens to have a talent for expressing things that concern us as a society, as a species. The work, however, is about this society, this species, not about the creator. And as such, the viewer has as much right to derive meaning from it as the creator.

[Michaël Samyn]

The beauty of interactive art, from my standpoint, is that it really opens up the dialog in an explicit way: concedes that the viewer/player really is as much (or more) a part of the dialog as the creator is. We've been saying as much when it comes to literature and other traditional art forms for a long time, but videogames/notgames force the concession to be real (and I find it ironic that so many critics of film and literature etc., who have been espousing the significance of the viewer and the constructed nature of meaning for decades, find it so difficult to accept the idea of interactive artwork).

So true.

[JordanMagnuson]

I totally agree that the fact that an art work was created by a human is very important. The thing that bothers me is that people often seem to think that the art work is about this particular human, this artist. That the work is about them and about their life and about their opinions. And that experiencing art is about figuring out what the artist was trying to say. In my experience (both as creator and as audience) this is a completely wrong way to approach art.

Art can indeed very often make us feel connected to other humans. But not necessarily to the creator of the piece. He/she is just a channel, a medium, a person who happens to have a talent for expressing things that concern us as a society, as a species. The work, however, is about this society, this species, not about the creator. And as such, the viewer has as much right to derive meaning from it as the creator.

I agree with you, Michaël.