Montage As A Participatory System: Interactions with the Moving Image

Abstract

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictionsRecent developments in network culture suggest a weakening of hierarchical narratives of power and representation. Online technologies of distributed authorship appear to nurture a complex, speculative, contradictory and contingent realism. Yet there is a continuing deficit where the moving image is concerned, its very form appearing resistant to the dynamic throughputs and change models of real-time interaction. If the task is not to suspend but encourage disbelief as a condition in the user, how can this be approached as a design problem? In the attempt to build a series of design projects suggesting open architectures for the moving image, might a variety of (pre-digital) precursors from the worlds of art, architecture and film offer the designer models for inspiration or adaptation? A series of projects have been undertaken. Each investigates the composite moving image, specifically in the context of real-time computation and interaction. This arose from a desire to interrogate the qualia of the moving image within interactive systems, relative to a range of behaviours and/or observer positions, which attempt to situate users as conscious compositors. This is explored in the thesis through reflecting on a series of experimental interfaces designed for real time composition in performance, exhibition and online contexts