Interactivity...

Interactivity, Stallabrass:

"it should empower users, encourage cultral activity, rather than mere spectating, and make art more responsive to its audience."

Stallabrass is saying all this 'interactivity' that is happening now is not interactivity at all but just an interactive style activity. He says 'interactivity' is too limiting, the freedom for the user is an illusion.

"This is not interactivity. It is an 'interactive-style' activity."

I think he is too specific when he defines what interactivity means, he says it should be completely free of bounds to the user but I think there will always be a limitation for everything but it is how you play with those limits that achieve the sense of freedom and I think whether you do something in real-time or not affects the outcome of how you see the limit.

This is interesting as for my design I could think about how I can make the user feel empowered by something but is merely spectating in the end e.g. the user builds a train track, the train then moves along the track as a result but the actual empowerment is lost already as soon as the user creates the tracks, the experience of controlling the train in not in real-time so they are only spectating.

Words that come into mind:

restriction, limits, illusion, boundaries, web, art, book, online gaming, WOW, counterstrike, call of duty, experience, empowering, real, fake freedom, invisible, trapped, specific, style, spectate, hands-on, real-time