Thursday, April 26, 2007

Interactive vs. Multimedia

Thank you WIKIPEDIA!

"Interactivity in new media

Interactivity also relates to new media art technologies where humans and animals are able to interact with and change the course of an artwork. Artists and researchers around the world are working on unique interfaces to allow new forms of interaction that extend beyond the QWERTY keyboard and the now ubiquitous mouse. Artists, such as Stelarc work to define new interfaces that challenge our notion of what is possible when interacting with machines. His Hexapod for example looks like an insect though walks like a dog and the locomotion is controlled by shifting the body weight and turning the torso. Others like Ken Rinaldo have defined unique interfaces for fish in which Siamese Fighting Fish are able to control their rolling robotic fish bowls to interact across the gap of the glass. Simon Penny's Petit Mal allows a two wheeled sculpture to sense and respond to human presence and intelligently navigate the environment.

Denis McQuail mentions interactivity as one of the main characteristic of the new media. He quotes[3]:

Interactivity: as indicated by the ratio of response or initiative on the part of the user to the "offer" of the source/sender"


Multimedia:

"media that uses multiple forms of information content and information processing (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video, interactivity) to inform or entertain the (user) audience. Multimedia also refers to the use of (but not limited to) electronic media to store and experience multimedia content. Multimedia is similar to traditional mixed media in fine art, but with a broader scope. The term rich media is synonymous for interactive multimedia. Multimedia means that computer info can be represented through audio, graphics, image, video and animation in addition to traditional media (text and graphics). Hypermedia can be considered one particular multimedia application."



Presentation of Multimedia can be Linear or Nonlinear:

"Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear active content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as a cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with a computer game or used in self-paced computer based training. Non-linear content is also known as hypermedia content. Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded. A recorded presentation may allow interactivity via a navigation system. A live multimedia presentation may allow interactivity via interaction with the presenter or performer."

No comments: