Performing Space

The notion of performance is introduced as a design approach to the creation of interactive digital environments. These environments can ultimately be regarded as user-spaces; a condition which replace the art object with a configuration of interactions. Our understanding of space, as suggested by Lefevbre, defines the “inhabitant” as a full participant, a user, a performer of space. Two interactive installations by the author and works by others in the field provide a context for discussion and analysis. Storage Space : Re-inventing access The digital computer has penetrated different strands of creativity to the extent that it has fundamentally changed the way we are exposed to media objects such as music, film, visual art... The digital interface introduces a re-fragmentation of audiovisual media in which segmented information structures are re-combined as interfacial objects. The difference between the analogue tape recorder and the harddisk recording/playback application represents not only a shift in storage media but more significantly, a cultural re-invention of practice. This praxis of access permeates the use of digital media, from the “author” to the “end user”. It articulates the action of accessing a previously stored item, making selections, marking items, encoding media for remote access (e.g. playback in conditions not controlled by the producer). Technological developments in storage media are implicated in numerous revolutions related to the way an artist approaches the creation and distribution of work. Soundbased work, for example, typically falls into the generalised format of CD playback, multi-track, or audio-file exchange. The format which wraps the dissemination of a media work has no doubt extreme impact in the way that the work itself is produced. Electronic-based media formats, and before those, standardised modes for distribution (framed canvas, published scores) effectively shape a discourse that is centred around the art object, an “Object Oriented Art” (Norvell, 2001). One of the elements in new media that seems distinct from other formats relates to the storage process that is intrinsic to the digital computer. The linear storage modes of film and magnetic tape are replaced by random-accessed hard disk segments. This shift in storage media introduces a level of familiarity with the media control that is perhaps unprecedented. The end user (audience) of an interactive CD-Rom is aware of different file types, data formats, screen resolution, sampling rates, in a context of constant re-configuration and control; i.e as computer files are displayed on our screen, we expect the possibility of changing parameters such as scaling, the control over an operation of zooming. This user-empowerment, led by modes of distribution, is fundamentally distinct to the viewer of a painted canvas, who might be aware of different types of brush strokes and pigments but has no influence on the display mode of the painted object. The digital computer is, by definition, an