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@zoo3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or

mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)

without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Adobe Garamond by Diane Gromala and The MIT Press.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bolter, J. David, r95r-.W'indows

and mirrors : interaction design, digital art, and the myth of transparency / Jay

David Bolter and Diane Gromala.

p. cm. -

(Leonardo)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN o-z6z-o2545-o (hc. : alk. paper)

r. Digital communications. 2. 'Web sites-Design. 3. Digitd aft. 4. Multimedia systems.

5. Human-computer interaction. I. Gromala, Diane. II. Title. III. Leonardo (Series)

(Cambridge, Mass.)

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s The Art Gallen- of SI(

9 Before and,{frer SIG(

Colophon: &zzz-t'^ atd

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Ihe Art Gallery of SIGGRAPE 2fi)O

SIGGRAPH 2ooo was a carnival for the twenry-first century. Its distant predecessors were the

medieval and Renaissance trade fairs of Europe, where people crowded into a muddy town mar-

ketplace to gawk at tables of exotic goods (cinnamon and silk), to be entertained by singers, jug-

glers, players, and animal acts. The delighs of SIGGMPH 2ooo were more high tech; there were

no dancing bears. For the conferees of StCCRapH zooo, technolory itself was the attraction: the

latest releases of Photoshop and OpenGL; the fastest new texture-mapping hardware from SGI;

the newest games for the Sony Playstation z. All these attractions were collected in a maze ofbooths in the enormous, refrigerated halls of the Morial Convenrion Center in New Orleans.

The conferees came not only to see the newest technological toys but also to dis-

cuss the future. For, unlike Comdex, the Las Vegas extrayagafiza of electronic con-

sumerism, SIGGRAPH is an academic conference as well as a trade show. In the technical

sessions, conferees considered technologies yet to be released. Academic compurer special-.

ists and industry researchers met to review work on subjects like the psycho-physiological

models of shading and lighting, the modeling of snow, the animation of clouds, and non-

photorealistic virtual realiry. Unlike other academic conferences, SIGGRAPH has long rec-

ognized that digital art can contribute to this discussion-that digital art too is technology

yet to be released. The Art Gallery has been a part of SIGGRAPH since the r98os, and the

ments in design. The mctal application is its interC

tal art is all interface, dcfir

digital art can provide srpossibilities and constniur

fails or succeeds unequiuofits interface.

In the follwingrArt Gallery of SIGGMPIi

examine a few pieces docd

piece: lVhat does this millessons can we carry from r

design? Because each picathe following three poinrs

:srulod rtrr{l 8ul./v\olloJ eI{}

lpoqura lvrr rr .u8rsap

Flrper Jo ruaurpoque uE 'uonezlper t sl acard qr"a asnef,eg lu8rsap

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uef, suossal

11146 ;praue8 ul &runrutuor uBIsaP prr8ry aqr ot raJo or a eq >lrolrt slqr saoP leqr4( :a)ald

qf,eaJo {se or tup ^

alN'esodrnd ogrcads ? ser{ Jnol slqt asn?f,ag 'llasop sa:eld .,r,ra3 ? eulurcxa

or Surddors '.oooz HdvtlDDIS Jo ,fiap3 rry

'u6tsop lellEtp lo alp rnol a'n sretdeqc Suru'o11o3 agr u1

aqr pue 'sog5r ap :dSolouqcar sr ool lr!

-car 3uo1 sprl Hdt'Ul

-uou puE 'spnop-Io

pcrSoyorsdqd-oqr{r'-plcads :arnduo: r

Pf,ruqf,al ,$ ql 'ir-uof lruona

-srP ot osIB rnq $or'suEalro J$rN ur.Er

Jornw " ur PeDq

:IDS ruog alarprzq I

eql :uorDeruE )rP s.i,eJara aJerp :rpar r$.rq :-3n('sre8urs,iq paurar

-Jeru rr1\{ot ippnru t oerP aJJAI SJOSSa@F

'af,EJJalul sll Jo

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rr :u8lsap pr€rp3o slulertsuol pue saulrgrssod

ar{r Jo tse} rpeltr ? qf,ns apr.r.ord uec rrz prlSrp

lqrra. sr teqa 'asn ro Surrttal^ stl Jo acuatredxa aqr lg lp:nua PauUrP 'ef,gralul IIE sI uB Iel

-l8lp puv 'srrsn str ot sruasard uolreclldde eq] tzrIt elg aqt-erejralul stl sr uorrecrldde pl-r8rp lur 3o tred ,tuBuodur tsour eqt sde.u. aruos ur pue 'elgrsl^ tsour aI{J 'u8rsep uI slualu

-lradxa aran drelpS rrv alp uI suol]

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rr{t J{r'I 'sarualradxa a^Itf,"Jrtul tltl^{

srotrsrl papr,ro.rd srlglqxe serSolouqral

Sur8raug agr yo duttu 'rre prr8ry agr

a1q 'ue8ag salSolougcor SulSrerua agr

PUB PaPue lrB 3qr araqa ePIf,aP ol ]lnf,

-rl3lp rl punoJ e^EI{ rg8rtu notr 'tlqlqxe

sarSolouqcaa Sur8;arug agt s? IIa./'a,

se (r'r ern8g) lralpg rrv aqr Pasnoq

'ur eplnqs aceds aqr elqtuasse or q8noua

a8rel pauraas auole rlllrI,vi'C II"H'ststrre ptr8rp Surpeal lrxrs

Jo lrol\ aqr Sullqrqxa'rf,uaJeJuof, 3r{l

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$ulerlsuoc pue seu[qrssod eql lo ]so]

lsereetc ou ap!^ord uec uP tel!6!0

CHAPIEE 1

1- The computer has become a new medium (a new set of media forms).

2. To design a digital artifact is to design an experience-

3. Digital design should not try to be invisible.

Since the r97os, it has become increasingly clear in our cukure that the compurer

and related digital technologies are media technologies and supporr a range of new media

forms. Media forms are not just channels for information, they also provide experiences.

Furthermore, in every digital artifact, from spreadsheet to video game, the physical shape, the

interface, the look and feel are part ofthe usert experience. Every digital arrifafi needs at

times to be visible to its user; it needs to be both a window and a mirror.

TEXT RAIN

kt July zi, zooo, and the gallery is crowded with visitors. An installation that everyone visits

sooner rather than later is TEXT RAIN, created by Camille Utterback and Romy Archituv.

TEXT MIN consists of two large parallel screens; one features projected video, while the other

seryes as a backdrop. These two screens form a corridor about ten feet wide within the gallery

and no one passes through that corridor without glancing up at the screen, slowing, and then

stopping, at least briefly, to take part in the show. fu the visitor immediately discovers, she

herself becomes the show, when her face and figure are caught by the video camera and pro-

jected on the screen in black and white. At the same time, a rain of colored letters falls steadily

from the top of the screen. lTherever the letters come in contact with the viewer's image, they

cease to fall. tVhenever the viewer moves, the letters that had collected resume their fall.

Visitors instantly want to play, making visual and verbal patterns by holding the letters in

their hands or along their arms (figures r.z

and I.3). They hold up boards or sheets in

order to catch the letters and even make

them rebound (figures r.4 and r.5).

Figure r.z

Camilb Utterbach and Romy Archituu TFXT

RNN: Catching thefalling lttters.

a

a

design. TEXTP#,INkasm,

viewers make of it. Vi$qtbut the falling leaers. tn Eusers at the same time- IErhey write in the process o{

MIN is about the process o

The leaers of rhc

rou cup your han& rou rs'ord or phrase belongs to r

Egurt r.4

TE(T RAIN: Uing a sl*t a

'il211a1 2q1 ssol ?u? ' ' ' :NIYu JXEJl'r atnSq

' qaar q Qaqs a 3uts2 :NIVS JxgJh'r atnStg

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ag1 'ase;gd tror{s E Jo pJo.^ aloqa E arnldo o} a8euau saurr}auros nol 'spueq .rnol dnc nol

11 '(€.66t) qtolurz urag lq ,,no 'I1EJ,, ruaod aqr uroU aruor rxer eqrJo srauel aqJ

'8ur4eru u,la'o str Jo ssaro;d eqr rnoq? s,t: NIVa

ayEl ',{n1p? eqr ur suone]prsur prr8rp raqro aqr a1r1 'Surpear 3o ssa:ord arp ul artrru lagl

leqt txat e'eteaJ) or dlag sJasn-J3.&\erl str rer{t tx3t E sr11lttr JXTJ')vtn alu?s egt t? sJesn

ro sluzdrcrtred arc leqr fuual arznbape llarrtua u? rou sr ilamaut '.rlg uI 'srerral Suqpg erp tnq

uaeJf,s er{l uo Surqtou sr eJerll ro3 'ataldruocul sr acald ar{t 'ruaqr rnoqtrlN 'tr Jo eryru sJr./v'rrl

ar{r req.tl sr rr :sJor"arl strJo se sra.trarl slr3o uorssardxa uE l{lnru * sr.NIW JXEJ'uBrsap

,sJol?eJf, er{l qlvt{ sJe.&\eI er{r Jo uoll

-reratur Jqr ruory seruo: acard srgr3o

aouauedxa eqt 1rql"d ('1e,,rr rre prr8rp

tq r.usaoP uoDou fnu?uror ltql)'lrrpuosrad s,rsrut er{r Jo uorssardxa

ue lldurs wu st NIVA JX1J

fyoq uq qqm ilaj

-14 aql qauu?qr uruaP tr:NIw JxaJ€'r atnkg l

NtvH txlt

uI sJaltal :q: Su::--'

'llE-J llar{r flu:.-: :

larp 'a8erur s.ta-\\::'. :={lrptats sIIEJ srrnrl r:j-1i

-o;d put ElJLuEr ,:::'*'

aqs'sJa^olsrp -ir::.;uaqr pue'8ur.uois 'u=:

'd-rep8 aql ulqrr.$:pLB

raqro ,qr elr{.$ 'o::i:,'. :'^ntlqrr;'.ituog ;*::

stIsIA auo.1.J-\: l?u: -.jo

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CHAPTEB 1

Figure r.6

TEXT RAIN: Mahing a hinetic poem.

their fall. W'hen one or more letters are lost

or the letters of another word intervene,

TEXT P#lNbecomes a kinetic poem---one

that re-forms itself before your eyes.

Turningconld become tuning; limb, limbo.

Often, the letters that rain down offer only nonsense, but sometimes they make just enough

sense to encourage the viewers to find meaning. "TuninGear und too" or "ym for limbs" or

"Im faces" could be phrases from James Joyce (Figure r.6).

In this way TEXT RAIN comes to mean what the viewer-user wills it to mean.

Digital worla like TEXT MIN make us playfully aware of our relationship to our technology,

and they suggest that we can assert some degree ofcontrol over the relationship.

TEXT MIN not only invites its participants to make meaning; it puts them on video

as they do so. Other visitors to the gallery can see them holding up their arms and smiling, and

they can see the images on the screen, which explain the participants' funny gestures. The

behavior of the participants brings other visitors over, who then become participants themselves.

TEXT RAIN is a poem and a video program at the same time. As an experiment in the future

of digital technology, it suggests that that future belongs to presentation and representation.

In our digital culture, we are indeed coming to value computers for their capacity to

present and represent. 'We have known for decades that computers can represent numbers

and texts, but now we know that they can also present images and sounds. Using a computer

has become a multimedia experience-an experience so compelling that we in the industrial-

ized world now surround ourselves with digital devices. In the past, we were reluctant to

acknowledge that computers offered us such experiences. Only teenage boys and geeks were

allowed to admit that digital technology could be fun or exciting. For the rest of us, comput-

ers were supposed to be "good for something." However, just like films, CDs, and boots,

what digital artiActs are often good for is to stage experiences for their users.

HCI expert and cognitive scientist Donald Norman tells us that as computers

become smaller and more portable, they are morphing into information appliances. Although

ir is cenainly true rhar rltitoo limidng.'We do nor ce

simply apply compurerr Go

books or television ffichculrural territory thar is urorv rlrat TEXT P#.1]'- ardxinstallarion c"lls is paroop

dran merely to vies'.

Brenda t^aurrd usputer when she rwote Cmg

applicarions not onh- rc be

much emphasis on one rz*onlv a new st ge for dlearri

a new kind of book Thc opresents tiem in great rzria

ir is the digiml compurer

In its fifrr-rcar hfo

tronic brain, a filing cabim

see how the computer h^ s

The computer becqrr e

@$!l! Depending on prorld, whose names sound fikc

*nachines are used almc{ Grar

aagineers. Computer pioneer tIrpdd would only ever need fn

The compurer did not sun,

,loh.u von Neumann, dc briSc Ersr programrnablc com1

apcr-&st calculadng mgirrc

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Io ((sqrull ro3 uI.- ro ,

q8noua tmf opru iry

CHAPTEB 1

funded by the U.S. and British governments as part of the effort to win'World'War II and

then to ensure the advance of technolory after the war. Even at that dme, however, von

Neumann and Thring understood their machines as something more-as "symbol manipula-

tors." It didnt matter whether the symbols were numbers, words, or the elements of any logi-

cal calculus. The computer could take these inputs, apply the rules of logic, and produce new

Patterns as output.

In the late r94os, when he was working at Manchester Universiry and musing on

the significance of the first computers, Alan TLring sune to believe that the essence of human

thought is symbol manipulation. Tirring was in many ways a stereotype of the British mathe-

matical genius, lost in thought and unconcerned with appearances: he bit his nails, went out

without his tie, and rode a birycle whose chain derailed with mathematical regularity

(Hodges 1981). During World W'ar II, Tirring had helped to build and use the mechanical

Bombe and the electronic Colossus to decrypt messages from the Germans' Enigma coding

machines, so he knew that a computer could function as a technology for transforming and

transferring messages-that is, as a medium. But he went in another direction, appropriate

for an introverted genius, and became convinced that the digital computer was not a medium

but a mind. For Tirring and others who followed him, the computer should not iust be a

channel for human messages; it should be a thinking machine, capable of producing its own

messages.

@TheU.S.economyisalreadyspending$10millionayearoncomputerhardware(Cortada1997,32). The machines are beginning to be used not only for military and scientific research, but also for

large-scale bureaucratic tabulation and business data processing. 0n election night in November two

years earlier, the UNIVAC computer had predicted a landslide win for Dwight Eisenhower, suggesting that

computers can manifest greater political savvythan the pollsters, who were predicting a close race.

Tirring became the patron saint of the artificial intelligence (AI) movement. Following

Tirring, AI specialists, including John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, argued that computers

could make that ultimate leap over the wall that the French philosopher Descartes had

erected between the mind and the body. They believed that computers were physical

machines that could exhibit mind, the very idea that Descartes had thought impossible.

These enthusiasts proceeded to frighten and fascinate us with this vision for almost half a

oFrrurr', altlough erro ulor -{I enrhusiasts zool bFrcr as a srrnbol mrotpd'"*ts of rhe computer. 6c I

:nore recendv rhe ryrez&f,ot &e compurer as sr-mbol

rix cnrhusiasrs kept insistir

ssmbol manipuladon-<b,il computers. -.\nd bccaJ{r(Dc serur- It nzs eesicr m

mli 'm lilre pfia1. Edio, t

@*erearero.Effrg t*n+.slrared computEr sFiltffi gr6q711*'nteractirety--

3on'rguE/s potcmral to r;Isr! -

-1 i- soiccs ErrE sT€EsiE

h.ry rh-. or.er de odrrdrfr:n e ruung hu'unirc Jiw kiod of rczding rnd rrlD@ rEccpdln in rS68 rh$prmt. rhkh indudcd co

ed hyprr@nl l;nEng H

tid@Ed.J.CRI;..}li.lF

^ ril[ bc.blc to cDomrLndids end Terhr ryfpil-

m#l- in 1968. rzs oa of r

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u'm m-rrr.lrgi< hd to bc r

ffic Fsoorl comtrffi.

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CHAPTEB 1

E$sl[rhe number of personal computers in the United States already exceeds 500,000 (Cortada

1997,33). Two college dropouts are building and marketing a microcomputerthey call the Apple. The

networking of universities and corporate research centers, which began around 1970 as the ABPANEI

continues. College students at Duke and the University of North Carolina are devising a protocol called

Usenet to allow people to subscribe and contribute messages to newsgroups.

Licklider at the Advanced Research Projects Ag.r.y in the Defense Department

supported the development of the wide-area nerwork, the ARPANET, which eventually led to

the NSFNet and the contemporary Internet. Robert Metcalfe and others ar Xerox Palo Alto

Research Center (PARC) in the r97os created the software and hardware for local-area net-

working, called Ethernet. Meanwhile, Alan Kay and his team at Xerox PARC were invenring

the personal computer, which Kay called the Dynabook, or 'personal dynamic medium"

(Hiltzik ry9il.K^y had no doubt what the computer was when he wrote, 'Although digital

computers were originally designed to do arithmetic computation, the abiliry to simulate the

details of any descriptive model, means that the computer, viewed as a medium itsell can be

all other media if the embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently well provided" (K.y

and Goldberg r99il.Kay was claiming that the computer was the ultimate medium and

could make all other media obsolete. Using his Dynabook, we could create, edit, and store

texts; we could draw and paint; we could even to compose and score music.

'What Kay and his colleagues actually produced was rhe Alto (figure r7), an

"interim" Dynabook that could perform all these wonders in some form. But the AIto was a

research machine, which only the workers at Xerox PARC and

some lucky students at the Jordan Road Middle School in PaIo

Alto ever got to use. In order to convince the rest ofus, the

Dynabook had to come into the hands of millions of users,

and Steve Jobs added that necessary element when he marketed

Figure r.7

The Aho com?uter, a "personal dynamic medium" of the mid-

rg4os. Courtes! of Xerox Palo Aho Research Center.

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CHAPTER 1

medium when these tools and practices became widespread and the rhetoric of their enthusi-

asts became plausible. That rhetoric moved from articles in journals to advertisements in

newspapers and on television, as communications and computer corporations began to

announce (prematurely) that the computer was replacing the printing press. (It is amazing

how seductive the rhetoric of prediction is. As recently as 2ooo, in Designing\Veb Uability,

Jakob Nielsen was predicting that computers would replace printed books by zoo7.)

@WithitsWindowsoperatingsystem,Microsoftensuresthesuccessofthegraphicalinter-face that Xerox and Apple pioneered. The supporters of the D0S interface are left to join the Society for

Creative Anachronism. Meanwhile, when Marc Andreessen shows the "inline image" tag to Tim Berners-

Lee, the World Wide Web becomes a medium of visual design that will soon rival magazines and books.

The \7orld'Wide Veb was the final element, creating in the r99os an audience of

millions of viewer-users for the digital experiences that networked computers had to offer.

The creator of the W'eb, Tim Berners-Lee, had originally conceived of it as a textual

medium, a global hypertext of words. But a few years later, Mark Andreessen and his col-

leagues devised the graphical 'Web browser and placed images and text together on a tVeb

page for the first time. 'STithin a few more years, it had become apparent that the computer

could reconfigure and re-present much of the information and experience that our culture

had previously located in books, newspapers, and magazines, in radio, in films, and on tele-

vision. The compurer was now unquestionably a medium, and it seemed hard to think of it

as anything else.

At that point, our fears and fantasies changed too. For decades, AI specialists had

fascinated us with the notion that the computer would change what it means to be human.

(In rg8+, Sherry Tirrkle summed up their vision in her book The Second Selfl If the essence of

human thought was symbol manipulation, then it seemed inevitable that computers would

eventually outthink us. In the r96os, t97os, and r98os, philosophers, psychologists, and com-

puter scientists argued furiously over what computers could or could not do-whether there

was some human essence that computers could not duplicate. The argument was never set-

tled, though, because it was a debate over cultural constructions. Collectively as a culture, we

decide how compurers are going to be used-whether as aids to human intelligence (calcula-

tors and word processors), replacements for human intelligence (AI applications), or expressive

reod &tabeses, srite nsh..l become roudnc- g'hmrnipulator-as a gnphiDtiral Inrerface) coouoland nighmrares, and in Vtined The supponers olJinlbrmadon processon Tl

rir_r- rlat emphasizd Sc rrh"r 10, b€ human Eirs ro tiust *'har we feel *ica weace changed. It qzs no hinstead, it *'as the €ryencr

The lnternet rzsInremet rcali?f,d dre risinporentially) globeJ ncrrud

elooe computer, one n-idqdcskop compurers ro palsThe rerra we ryped ioto qrrzders in rhe traditiooel foiorh creation and aLurosr irrpplicarions for insrant --J-nger of commglirring ro.ight never meer and rrt r

'suonesJe^Uof, 'etetuDur ua e '8uol a Eq lr{8rtu aa uorllr\ rl1l1!\ tel PuE tealu Ja au tqSnu

e ^.

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prruetod puB luaruatrf,xa ar{t.rrJer{l qrv( pauJBtr qorqrrr 'Sur8essaru tu?tsur ro3 suorreclldde

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CHAPTEB 1

If we put these two defining digital technologies, graphics and networking, together,

then we get global hypermedia on the \7orld lVide'Web-of we get a mofe Poetic vision:

novelist'lfilliam Gibsont ryberspace, a globally networked virtual realiry. In either case,

digital technology today of[ers an experience that is more vivid than the phrase information

?rocessing cafi convey.

To design a digital artifact is to design an experience

\7e live in a media-saturated environment, in which many different forms and technologies

compete for our artenrion. The traditional media (television, radio, film, and magazines and

newspapers) are far from dead, and new digital forms, from video games to tVeb Pages' must

compete with them and with each other. The design of even the most business-like computer

applications must take this competition into account. Computer applications can no longer

afford to be (if they ever were) simple channels for the delivery of information, as if that were

the same thing as delivering milk or cat food. Every application must be an experience'

In fact, interacting with a computer was an experience evrcn before the computer

was a medium, even in the era of plugboards, magnetic tapes, and punch cards. Talk to the

veterans of the days before computers had interfaces, and they will tell you about the labori

ous process ofinscribing programs on decks ofpunch cards. In the r94os, r95os, and r96os,

to use a computer meant to operate a machine. Yet even batch programming by punch card

had its own rhythms and even pleasures. Anyone who really disliked the required precision

and repetition presumably went into some other line of work.

Today, we do not operate computers; rather, we interact with them, and successful

digital artifacts are designed to be experienced, not simply used. The term aner is unfortunate

(but now unavoidable), as if we were habituated or addicted to the artifact. Good digital

designs do not addict; they invite us to partici-

pate, ro act and react. To design a digital artifact To design a digital artifact is to

is to choreograph the experience that the user choreograph the experience thatthe

will have. If the design is too restrictive, the usel will have.choreography too heavy-handed, the experience

may alienate the user. (The whole genre of computer-based training is heavy-handed in this

sense.) If the design is ill defined, however, we cannot figure out what genre we are in. A new

application can fail precisely because the user does not know what it is for.

Hypenext itscfo ahtbr- fkl Nelson, s.ho coinod

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CHAPTER 1

power. Pragmatists like Jakob Nielsen, who tell us that the W'eb is about gleaning information

as rapidlyas possible from transparent pages of words and images, do not seem to understand

why this technology is extraordinarily popular. They tell us how bad most \fleb sites are at

conveying information. Yet if the !7'eb is so bad at doing what it is supposed to do, why do

millions of people choose to share the "hallucination'? The !7'eb is a multimedia experience

in which users are prepared to indulge for five, ten, or clvenry hours a week, and the visual

design of W'eb pages is not "window dressing" for the content. The form and content of'W'eb

pages are inseparable. Pragmatic explanations of the 'Web as an information system are not

wrong, but they are insufficient. The same pragmatic explanation fails to account for the

influence throughout the twentieth cenrury of visual design in posters and magazines and on

television. It fails to explain why successful corporations have been willing to pay millions of

dollars on branding and design programs for stationery and physical products and why they

continue to do so on the Web.

In the past decade, some digital designers have come to speak of their task as "inter-

action design," understanding an interAce or application not as a series ofstatic screens, but

rather as a process of give and take between computer and user. Interaction designers must

keep in mind a world of if-then scenarios. In a sense, they must think like scriprwriters

preparing the dialogue for a film or play, but with a key difference: in a film or play, the dia-

logue is fixed, while in a digital interface, the possibilities multiply as the usert choices call

forth different visual or textual responses from the computer. A digital artifact can be

designed to unfold in multiple ways. The best

digital art can help us see how to design for Works of digital art are experiments

multipliciry because such art adapts itself to the in interaction design.

user rather than forcing the user to follow a

rigid script. \forks of digital art are experiments in interaction design. They can afford to be

radical experiments because they do not have to meet the (often contradictory) demands of a

client. As pure interfaces, they demonstrate that content and form are inseparable. A work of

digital art can isolate and explore with clariry the relationship bewveen itselfand the user.

As Nathan Shedroff (zooz) puts it, "The emphasis in Interaction Design is on the

crearion ofcompelling experiences," and for that reason he also calls his approach "experience

design." shedroffis one of a number of innovators (including Clement Mok, Richard Saul

'Wurman, David Kelly, Shelley Evanson, and Hugh Dubberley) who are bringing graphic and

l:grre t.rcTo*ers ar SIGGRipn

t.:. t5. pa.ttng tn th( I--J:

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CHAPIER 1

cannot deny that they are media forms, depending on highly sophisticated, electronic tech-

nology. At the same time, in crafting digital applications, designers musr rry to make their

work easy to grasp and accessible for their users. Digital art, like the work at SIGGMPH

zooo, contributes to digital design by showing us how media forms can also be immediate.

TEXT RAIN, for example, combines forms of print and video to give us a new kind

of reading and writing. A poem and a television show ar rhe same time, TEXT MIN is both

visible and invisible as a media form. The participants find the interface so easy to use, so

natural, that they need no instruction at dl. They understand instandy how to project their

images on the screen and interact with the falling letters. The space of ruxr n uw is an image

of the physicd world and at the same time an interface, a space for the manipulation of texts.

Digital art, Iike other digital applications, often opens a window for us, as we look

through the computer screen to see the images or information located "on the other side."

But TEXT RAIN is also a mirror, reflecting us as we manipulate the lemers. It is as if we have

passed through the screen and find ourselves inside some malfunctioning word processor thar

is raining letters down on us. TEXT RAIN surprises and pleases us by being simultaneously a

mirror and a window. If there is one reason that digital art is important for digital design, it is

this: digitd art reminds us rhar every inrerftce is a mirror as well as a window.

Digital design should not try to be invisible

Think of the computer screen as a window, opening up onto a visual world that seems to be

behind or beyond it. This is the world of information that the computer offers: texts, graph-

ics, digitized images, and sound. Concentrating on the text or images, the user forgets about

the interface (menus, icons, cursor), and the interface becomes transparent. HCI specialists

and some designers speak as if that were the only goal of interface design: to fashion a rrans-

parent window onto a world of information.

There are times, however, when the user should be looking at rhe interface, not

through it, in order to make it function: to activate icons or to choose menu items, for exam-

ple. At such moments, the interface is no longer a window, but a mirror, reflecting the user

and her relationship to the computer. The interface is saying in effect, "I am a compurer

application, and you are the user of that application." No interface can be or should be per-

fecdy transparent, because the interface will break at some time, and the user will have to

diagnose the problem. Furthermore, even when the interface is working, we should not allow

ir to take us in complc

ways in which ir shapc

interface as it presenrs

But if we carmor also

interface as a technice

missing half of rhe erymedia can offer.

The same wqany orher medium as oso absorbed in the story

are watching a film ar el

however, we want to srq

enriches the experience r

viewers of this populer rcan. If we buy rhe D\Dour of rhe find cur, an ir

rhe special effects. Thesc

fooling us. Popular inrcnincreased in recent decad

windows. The same is mtions as both a windoy a

\rVhen we look iaround us-that is, oursc

drey reflect the user in cqor home environmeor. :ndo this work of reflecdng

brings all ofthese coorerE

help but reflect them- Thcarl adapt to these conrerx

contexts and, in the proca

operate. This is *4rere .tt"precisely the kind of inrerf

'stxstuor sauueper pue strelrar rltoq reqt af,EJreturJo puH eqr llasrcard

sr rm prr8rp asnef,eq 'uonnqutuotr prcads r a>leru uBf, rre pr6lp areq r sr srg;'ererado

regreSor aogJetur eq] pu? aqs qrrq ^

ur slxatuof, ar{t augapar 'ssacord aqr ur 'pue stxetuotr

raqJo ar?ae rasn eqt eTetu III^{ seogratur Surlladruor rsou arIJ 'stxatuof, esaqr ot tdrpr uec

rl qlH./$. ur sle,vr aqt uo spuadaP tr^raoq 'areJrerur ur Jo ssef,3ns eqJ 'rueqr rcagar rng dpg

rourrer u8rsep eqr'ef,pJretur pu8ry lue qtr^r uonf,Eretur req ot stxetuor eser{rJo p s8uuq

resn aqr esnef,afl 'rr pua]ur llsnorosuoo srau8lsap aqt 1ou ro rer{leq.a{ Surrcagar3o >Fo,n srqt op

laql'arnrpc put a8en8uel rag dq paugap tueruuorrlue ra8rel aqr pur (tueruuorrlua eurorl ro

Suryror,a. rterpauur raq 's8urpunorrns p:lslqd reg Surpnlcur 'txatuof, ur resn aqt rcagar larp

lerfl asurs aql ur sJoJJrru alrl aJ? saf,gJetur FllSlC 'txeluof, ur sallasJno 'sl teql-sn punore

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sEI{ f,Isnu pue 's roqs uorsrlelat 'sur1g Suupru jo ssacord eqt ur tsarolur repdo4 'sn 3ur1oo3

pue Surrecs ur speaf,f,ns tulrJ aqt ^.\oq

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lagr pue 'apBtu ar? slulu lrror{ tnog? arour ureal ot ra8ee ere r.unrpeu rqndod srqt Jo sra^rar^

lue141 'srelogls rulgJo dnor8 geus e roj lluo tou pue 'rul5 er{tJo a:uerradxa aqt sarlf,rrua

ssauaJe \E srr{J 'ap"tu sB \ rul5 aqt .uoq atercardde pue >ll"g dats ot luern a,r\ ta^eaorI

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ta8 seruneruos uef, a.&r' '.uJIU E rIltelrr a \ uarl[\ ']uaredsuer llaarsnlcxa sr runrpaur Jaqto dup

P31Eer1 e.&Jr enJl eq PFo^ atuBs ar{I

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CHAPTEB 1

Like other digital artists in the pasr two decades, those at SIGGRAPH 2ooo want us

to be aware of the contexts in which their individual worls in particular and digital technol-

ogy in general function. For that reason, there are more mirrors than windows among their

exhibits. TWT MIN is a mirror that reflects its users, for as passers-by are caught by the cam-

era, they find themselves projected on the screen in a rain of falling letters. The exhibit we

visir in chapter z, called Wooden Minor, combines mechanicd and electronic technology to

produce a beautifully textured image of its visitors. In chapter l, we visit Nosee te ipsum

("know yourself"), a digital collage that contains at its center a captured video image ofthe

visitor. Other pieces in the gallery are mirrors in a metaphoric sense, reflecting the layers of

media and culrure in which we find ourselves situated today. Magic Book and the Faheshop

'W'eb site remind us of the variety of media forms that surround us in our media-saturated

culture. T:Gardm concentrates on the spatial context in which we as embodied creatures

operare, and Tlrminal Time reminds us playfully of the ideological lenses through which we

understand history. None of these pieces is content just to reflect us; they dl invite us to

reimagine and redefine our contexts.

Thken together, all of these pieces from SIGGRAPH 2ooo demonstrate the value of

digital an for the larger fields of digital design and HCI. \forks of digital art have a critical

function: they critique the an of design itself. They make us aware of the assumptions that

are built into the practices of designers and computer specialists. Because computer designers

so often assume that the interface should be a window, digital art insists that the interface can

also be a mirror. And in the process, it demonstrates the other great stratery of digital design.

Those who understand and master both srategies will be more effective designers.