art and technology || interactive multimedia: the gestalt of a gigabyte

National Art Education Association

Interactive Multimedia: The Gestalt of a GigabyteAuthor(s): Brian SlawsonSource: Art Education, Vol. 46, No. 6, Art and Technology (Nov., 1993), pp. 15-22Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193404 .

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- m m - i w ~ w m i n in| X I I ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ T hGs tl

to strive, to seek, tofin d, and not to yield. "-ga b y te

.... to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. "-Tennyson.

P _ owerfully, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the 19th Century poet laureate, clos- es his poem about the Greek warrior Ulysses' epic quest for knowledge of the world in body, mind, and spirit. That same theme - discovering the perpetual richness of human experience - endures from generation

to generation as art educators enable students to understand more about themselves and their lives in the 20th century techno-culture.

When Tennyson wrote his reflective verse, the western world was in the midst of a technical era characterized by steam power and mass production - the Industrial Rev- olution. Since that time mechanization has given way to an electronic revolution of radio, television, and computers. The real commodity of the post-industrial world is no longer anything material, it is information: words and images instantly telecommuni- cated worldwide.

The computer is an instrument central to late 20th century methods of work and play. Nevertheless, it is in a state of technological infancy. Thirty years ago, electronic computers were room-sized math machines - calculating monoliths - that spewed out spools of processed numbers onto paper tape. Now miniaturized and more pow- erful, a computer can fit on your desktop or even in your hand. It is user-friendly.

BY BRIAN SLAWSON

NOVEMBER 1993 / ART EDUCATION N

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Screen design from the main

interaction area of the STYLE!

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based on the National Gallery of

Art's East Wing skylight.

ART EDUCATION / NOVEMBER 1993



Today computers do more than simply transmit quantities and information like programmatic drones. The invention of interactive multimedia (a technological marriage of the stereo system, computer, television, and perhaps soon, the telephone), has allowed computers to process not only numbers and letters, but a total sensory collage of sounds and images. Today computers have become a creative environment - a new medium - for discovering the human interweave of ideas.

This paper begins with an orientation to and overview of interactive multimedia, followed by a discussion of strategies for introducing this technology in the art classroom. (Note 1). Direct discussion of technically-oriented issues (like hardware and software) is avoided in favor of propelling discussion toward the thoughtful use of this new medium.

DEFINING Some call it New Media. Some call it

HyperMedia. Others prefer Intermedia, Cybermedia, Ultimedia, Supermedia, or Digital Media. Whatever the jargon, this technology has become useful in information display (like automated bank tellers), entertainment (computer games), as well as education and training.

As a business buzzword, "multimedia" has become slang for what used to be called an "audio-visual presentation" with synchronized slide projectors. Most applications in this mode demonstrate only a minimal vision of the potential for this

technology as a new medium. To artists, "multimedia" has been used to connote interdisciplinary art practice, not necessarily involving computers or electronics.

Perhaps the most complete term is the composite "interactive multimedia" - incorporating the two vital characteristics of this technology. "Multimedia" describes the use of a personal computer to compose, display and manipulate a variety of electronic media simultaneously, combining elements of text and speech, music and sound, still-images, motion video and animated graphics. The term "interactive" suggests the ability of the "reader" to control or modify the sequence and structure of experience in the electronic media environment.

Interactive multimedia can trace its origins to a literary movement known as hypertext - something not necessarily associated with computers. Hypertext describes a system of writing where fragments of text are connected in a web-like fashion, as opposed to the linear logic found in conventional writing. As computer technology became more accessible, writers began to use machines to control complex and intertwined structures of information. At certain points in a hypertext, readers are able to make decisions about their paths and then use the computer to jump instantly to other fragments of indirect, but associated text.

Early computers were number- processors, then became word- processors where typed-in text commands were used to program their operation. In the past decade, however, the computer interface has become more "graphical." The classic example is the Macintosh computer interface with icons, menus, and windows. As a consequence, Hypertext became

hypermedia. The non-linear and interactive nature remains the same, but text is now combined with elements of digital graphics, sounds, and video.

EDUCATING One example that vividly

demonstrates the potential of interactive multimedia to invigorate information, ideas, and learning is an innovative project called Ulysses based on the poem by Tennyson mentioned in the introduction. The Ulysses project (IBM, 1991) is one from a series of classic printed texts that have been augmented with a large library of high-quality video, text, graphics and audio stored on CD- ROMs and laserdiscs. Using the computer to interact with this massive multimedia collection, students can access an overview of the general context of history, philosophy, technology, people and ideas that influenced Tennyson: for example, the original writings (Iliad, Odyssey) by the Greek poet Homer. They can examine a variety of spoken interpretations of the poem, critical readings by scholars, an analysis of the composition, and linkages to associated literature. Students can browse through pages of text and video segments, edit and build new connections between events scattered across time and varying in interpretation.

In this new media environment, reading can become non-linear and flower with multiple viewpoints, allowing the "readers" to wander along individual paths and construct new orientations to the material. Interactive multimedia has made the poem fluid, organic and open so that students, as

NOVEMBER 1993 / ART EDUCATION



well as teachers, can annotate Tennyson's original verse with their own comments and interpretations. This is an example of how interactive multimedia compositions rework and reform our common sense of literacy. McLuhan (1964) forecast this same impact regarding television: 'The message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs." (p.24).

REPURPOSING Like the Ulysses project, a variety of

interactive multimedia resources have been produced for the visual arts. Video laserdisks, able to store thousands of still frames or motion video, have proven particularly useful in recording the art collections of many museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Other laserdisc titles focus on the works of individual artists like Van Gogh or Michelangelo. Interactive multimedia permits the control of these art laserdiscs by a computer, and promotes their use by students or teachers as a vast visual archive for the historical referencing of art images.

If integrated into existing visual art curricula, interactive multimedia is amplified beyond a simple reference tool. Used as a classroom catalyst, it can stimulate critical dialogue and learning. For example, Semrau and Boyer (1992) describe a lesson in which art students were asked to investigate how women are depicted in Van Gogh's works of art. The tools provided to students were a video laserdisc and a computerized database of information in which videodisc images are matched with interactive screens of computer text that describe the theme, period, influences, etc. of that particular artwork. Students were

able to search and select images indexed by keywords, and then compare, contrast, analyze and present their findings through a written report illustrated, in turn, with videodisc images.

ENTERTAINING Another strategy extending

interactive multimedia beyond simple application as a simple visual database is a game-based approach, where a nugget of information is wrapped with entertainment. A prototype project, named STYLE!, produced by a University of Florida research group, is one example of this motivating strategy. (Note 1).

The STYLE! project was designed to help novice students begin to discriminate and group artwork, based on such elements of visual style as the use of color or brushstroke or level of abstraction. Students are able to manipulate the National Gallery of Art videodisk, and through a "matching game" they are challenged to compare an original image wih three other images, then determine which one is related to the original by style.

Ten levels of increasing difficulty and complexity are included in style. At the novice levels, students match works that are stylistically diverse but related according to subject matter. For example, each image may be a portrait of a woman, but the set is made up of renderings in impressionist, cubist, or realist styles. At expert levels, matching is based on details requiring a greater

41

degree of discrimination. For example, each image in the advanced set may be rendered in a generally Impressionist manner but distinguished by the personal style of an individual artist such as general color scheme or habits of composition. Each of these levels has four set variations so that new configurations are possible each time the game is played. By playing through all ten levels students will view forty art images. This early prototype is not concerned with associating names of artists with artworks, as in slide identification of art history. Rather, it is focused on the perceptual and cognitive skills of style discrimination. Projected improvements include: on-computer data collection, where student interactions (correct selections, incorrect selections, time spent on each level, etc.) are recorded for research purposes, and teacher-modifiable image sets that allow individual teachers to construct their own matching images from the laserdisc in place of preset image comparisons.

For testing purposes, STYLE! software has been placed in a Florida high school art classroom. Expecting solitary users, we have instead found that many students play the game competitively or collaboratively in small groups. One of the students who tested the software commented (sic): "It is like a test in the form of a game which is more fun to do and students pay more attention to it."

The teacher reported that her students were very excited by the game format and that average students often excelled at the game. The teacher also thought that the STYLE! software would be an excellent preparation tool




The components of

a basic Interactive

Multimedia system

include a computer

laser disc player,

video monitor, and

CD-ROM drive.

in her school for performance exams that require students to analyze works of art.

DISCOVERING Rather than using this new

technology to replicate or enhance old tasks, it seems pertinent to uncover those new advantages for learning that interactive multimedia can provide for education. A compelling model for the visual arts is demonstrated in a prototype project, called the Museum Education Consortium's Museum Visitor's Prototype (Wilson, 1992). Like many other laserdisc libraries, this collection contains over 1000 still images of drawings, paintings, sketches, and sculptures along with numerous text and video segments. What makes this model unique is the exploratory nature of the computer

interaction with those data. This prototype is not a simple

slideshow, nor a show-and-tell, but a discovery-based educative experience. The "reader" can visit - via videodisc - the actual French garden painted by the Impressionist, Claude Monet. By watching video segments, the "reader" can conduct a self-directed investigation of the landscape, appreciating how color and light undulate across the pond of waterlilies, thereby experiencing the same vision that Monet was able to translate on canvas. Unlike earlier computer learning strategies of drill-and-repeat, this discovery-based model effectively exploits the "interactive" aspect of this computer medium.

discovery-oriented learning in any discipline. Elliot Soloway (1991), a researcher of educational technology, advocates an alternative to traditional didactic instruction by describing a constructive model for learning, oriented to the "nintendo generation" of students. Developing ideas with interactive multimedia allows students to express their understanding of concepts more completely by using contemporary media common in their daily lives. Using new technology, students can employ a full range of multimedia and interactive capabilities to compose, communicate, illustrate, and illuminate their ideas just as easily as typing a string of words on paper.

CONSTRUCTING Learning through making - a

conventional strategy for teaching the creative arts - can be extended to




Describing how computers can become an "interactive learning environment", Soloway reports that" ... learning requires an individual to be active, to be engaged in constructing an understanding that ties new ideas to old. Moreover, one learns by building artifacts - whether they be formal reports, private scribblings, Lego choo- choo trains, or computer programs, the path to learning is strewn with things, with externalizations." (p. 30).

Sueann Ambron (1990a) from the Apple Multimedia Lab describes how interactive multimedia is being used in the classroom to challenge the traditional preprogrammed sequence of directed instruction. The Visual Almanac is a video videodisc library of 7000 generic still images, motion video, and sounds collected from a variety of sources. Students use the Visual Almanac as an image and audio resource to construct their own interactive multimedia compositions: reports, poems, stories, or puzzles. Like Soloway, Ambron insists that the fun, challenge, creativity, and learning reside more in the process of making an artifact then in the end product.

CONNECTING In one classroom example,

HyperGLOB (Slawson, 1993), a constructive, collaborative, and student-oriented approach to using interactive multimedia as a creative learning tool is demonstrated. In this case, undergraduate graphic design students were introduced to interactive multimedia as a medium for expression and communication. The fundamental concept, however, is easily transferable

to any discipline or academic level and can engage individual students and the classroom as a whole.

Each student was asked to document, describe, report, inform, or express some aspect of human communication to a "reader" using the tools of interactive multimedia. Motivated by diverse personal interests, students developed a set of 18 HyperCard stacks exploring a variety of subject matter such as Tabloid Journalism, Finnish Mythology, Neural Anatomy, Psychic Phenomena, Body Language, and Chinese Pictograms.

In one stack named "Indian Sign Language" a student explained that Native Americans who populated and hunted the western plains often encountered one another. Since most had no written language, the groups developed a common system of hand gestures in an effort to communicate. This stack demonstrated several animated sequences of those shared signs. For example, the sign for "woman" is a downward stroke near the head with the hand - like combing through a long length of hair.

All students concentrated on taking advantage of the multimedia capabilities of HyperCard by using text, graphics, and animation along with sound, to communicate meaning. In the opening sequence of a stack on Newspaper Journalism the title was postered across the screen in Gothic blackletter script common to newspaper mastheads. However, as each letter appeared on the screen, it

was synchronized with the sound of clicking typewriter keys.

The primary challenge of this project was to exploit the potential for building non-linear sequences of ideas. At some point in designing their individual stacks, students were required to establish a sensible means of inter-connection between their subject matter and stacks designed by other members of the class. The result was a large network of convergent ideas which suggested the name: HyperGLOB. In the end, the most interesting aspect of the students' work was not so much their individual stacks as how they used a new medium to establish connections from stack to stack; how they found and filled the empty spaces between ideas.

With almost any classroom computer and the user-friendly software HyperCard, students can quickly produce sophisticated projects working individually or in teams. An advanced interactive multimedia system is not needed to begin exploring the fundamentals of interactive multimedia. Beyond introducing technically novice students to simple Macintosh computer operating skills, the HyperGLOB project was able to engage students in a constructive and collaborative sort of learning, where individual expression becomes nested in a larger network of ideas.

CONTRIBUTING A unique contribution of artists and

designers from any culture or period of time is their expert, practiced ability to create, interpret, manage and communicate ideas carried by media - be that the written word, a voice, a moving body, or paint on canvas. What


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group could be better able to pioneer new modes of creative expression on the changing frontier of contemporary technologies? When considering how interactive multimedia will change the studio practice and instruction of artists, it is equally important to explore how arts knowledge can contribute to interactive multimedia.

Studio practice and stage performance are fundamental to understanding the arts experience. Sensibilities regarding composition and expression can transfer from traditional disciplines to interactive multimedia. Three-dimensional

animations involve a sense of choreography as well as the spatial vision of a sculptor. Interactive video sequences, in their temporal nature, relate to drama and filmmaking. Digital sound extends from the study of music. Issues of color continue from painting. The layout of text and images is imported from graphic design.

The ability to compose meaningful images, video, and sound is as important as the ability to compose communicative text. Producing documents with interactive multimedia

Unlike viewing a film or reading

most books, moving through

non-linear information allows

the "reader" a choice of

sequence and direction.




demands an expanded definition of literacy in schools. Ambron (1990b) suggests that" ... as multimedia materials develop, the distinctions between teacher and student or expert and novice will blur; everyone will have access to vast stores of information, and be able to make their own way through those databases. The old standard of the teacher as repository of knowledge will be replaced by the teacher as expert guide." (p.22)

EXITING President Clinton (1993), has

remarked that his administration is the first to know the "gestalt of a gigabyte," and he is a proponent of a twenty-first century telecomputing infrastructure for our country known as "information super-highways". The twenty-first century will place new interactive capabilities on the educators' desktop: voice recognition, pen-based computing, intelligent systems, virtual reality simulations, cooperative telecomputing. Our task as educators using technology is like visualizing the transformation of the child in the cradle to grown adult.

The thoughts of Laszlo Moholy- Nagy (1987), the Hungarian designer and artist, writing seven decades ago about the emergence of film, motion pictures and photographic technologies, can easily be translated in terms of interactive multimedia: "Men discover new instruments, new

methods of work, which revolutionize their familiar habits of work. Often, however, it is a long time before the innovation is properly utilized; it is hampered by the old; the new function is shrouded in traditional form. The creative possibilities of the innovation are usually slowly disclosed by these old forms, old instruments, and fields of creativity which burst into euphoric flower when the innovation which has been preparing finally emerges." (p.27).

Brian Slawson is an assistant professor in graphic design at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

NOTES 1Further information on research in this area

may be obtained from the author on request.

2The Museum Education Consortium's Museum Visitor's Prototype was produced by Kathleen Wilson, of the Bank Street College of Education, in 1992.

REFERENCES Ambron, S. (1990a). Multimedia composition:

Is it similar to writing, painting, and composing music? Or is it something else altogether? in Ambron, S. & K Hooper, (Eds.) Learning with interactive Media: Developing and using multimedia tools in education (pp. 70-84). Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press

Ambron, S. (1990b). On multimedia in education. in Barker, J. & R. Tucker, (Eds.) The interactive learning revolution: Multimedia in education and training. (pp. 22-24). London: Kogan Page; New York: Nichols Publishing.

Clinton, B. & Gore, A. (1993). Transcript of address to Silicon Graphics Inc. (Mountainview, CA). The White House: Office of the Press Secretary. February 22, 1993.

IBM (International Business Machines) (1991). Ultimedia - Illuminated Books and Manuscripts. Information booklet.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: Signet Books.

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1987). Painting, photography,film. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Semrau, P. & Boyer BA. (1992). Using interactive video to examine cultural issues in art. The Computing Teacher. December/January 1991/1992,24-26.

Slawson, B. (1993). HyperGLOB: Introducing graphic designers to interactive multimedia. HyperNEXUS: Journal of Hypermedia and Multimedia Studies. International Society of Technology in Education, 3(2): 12-16.

Soloway, E. (1991). Quick, where do the computers go? Communications of the ACM. 34(2), 29-33.

Wilson, K S., (1992), Multimedia design research for the museum education consortium's museum visitor's prototype. Center for Technology in Education, Bank Street College of Education, Technical Report 24.

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