Framed by the process philosophy of Alfred Whitehead and the more recent work in object-oriented philosophy of figures such as Steven Shaviro and Graham Harman, this article develops an object-oriented approach to understanding interaction. By way of illustration I explore interactive artworks from Ken Rinaldo, Wolfgang Müench and Kiyoshi Furukawa, and Paul Sermon, which emphasise the intersection of a layer of technology in our sensory and physical experiences of the world. In order to develop an object-oriented exploration of these works, (...) and our day-to-day interactions with technology in a broader sense, I explore digital interaction as a process that involves the transductive relationships set up between objects and the milieu in which these objects find themselves. Central to this argument is setting all objects, including human users, technology and artifacts, on the same ontological footing. (shrink)

Interactive narratives are inextricable from the way that we understand our encounters with digital technology. This is based upon the way that these encounters are processually formed into a narrative of episodic events, arranged and re-arranged by various levels of agency. After describing past research conducted at the iCinema Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, this paper sets out a framework within which to build a relational theory of interactive narrative formation, outlining future research in the area.

Mixed Reality environments deployed in the service of art present a radical shift in aesthetics. These relatively recent artistic experiments open up many questions relating to the traditional distinction between subjects and objects. I seek to grapple with these questions of reception by viewing works by pioneering artists such as Jeffrey Shaw, Dennis Del Favero, Ulrike Gabriel and the artist group Blast Theory. Rather than viewing interaction within the reductive logic of a psychologized subject that apprehends a static object - (...) that is the case in so much aesthetic theory - I seek to position the aesthetic encounter with MR environments as a hybrid process. In this paper, by using A. N. Whitehead's process philosophy, I propose interaction as the coming together of two conditions; the condition of the machine and what I term the condition of 'userness'. (shrink)

This paper describes the Australian Research Council funded project Scenario, conducted at the iCinema Research Centre, University of New South Wales. Realized through interdisciplinary research, involving the domains of machine learning, interactive narrative and new media art, Scenario creates a mixed reality environment, surrounding the user within a 360-degree stereoscopic space, in which she can interact with digital characters that have a level of autonomy. Through its discussion of the aesthetics and technological architecture of Scenario the paper enters into an (...) explanation of what is termed `co-evolutionary' narrative, a function of the interactive relationship formed between a human user and an autonomous digital character. Understanding interaction as co-evolution the Scenario project enlists the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Manual DeLanda in order to propose interaction as a dynamic two-way process. The paper begins to unpack this theoretical framework for understanding interaction. (shrink)