'A' Critical Incident or 'The' Critical Incident?

Hi All,

still struggling with a migraine so apologies.

anyway, in response to your post Richard:

Quote:
I'm not sure you could argue that before Hypercard, there was no related practice. For example, I could argue that cinema is multimedia, being a radical innovation made up of pre-existing incremental ones. See aso the first videogames etc. In fact, go and take a look at Charles Babbage's Difference Engine in the Science Museum - although it never worked, but it did in theory (!!).


I agree with you that 'multimedia' (or perhaps more accurately its ancestors/siblings) existed in a variety of forms prior to Hypercard but the word I'm focussing on here is 'Practice'. I cannot find an example of a freely available tool/mechanism/vehicle/something else, that allowed creative individuals to cross media boundaries freely, to create interactive content without heed to existing computer science norms or prior knowledge, to view media types in an equalitarian way, to consider creating products comprised . . .

You could argue that videogames prior to Hypercard were the prevailing interactive media practice since essentially you were creating content behind an interface that allowed people to interact with it for entertainment and occasionally education. However, this required a far more in depth knowledge of computer technology, programming in Basic, Pascal, Machine code etc and where was the consideration of human computer interaction? or human to human interaction? did videogame designers really pore over questions of interface, feedback, community, user as creator?

I guess maybe they did?

Perhaps I'm talking more about empowerment? More about destroying the old Creator - User/Viewer relationship in a very concrete sense?

The Difference Engine is an example of genius! Personally I believe that we exist in a kind of "ideas and feelings" space time which like Einstein's rubber sheet model is curved. Every now and again something comes along (usually by individuals that somehow feel connected to this but disconnected from everyone else - and usually get persecuted for their troubles) that cause space time to curve and therefore defines our understanding of ourselves. The DE is one of those things. Imagine existence being bent by these items/creations/ideas/critical incidents?! But again, the DE (or the AE for that matter) uses the power relationships of its time and is not something that a painter could pick up and create 'new' art forms with. (although I suppose you could pickle it in formaldehyde . . .).

In 1986 to make cinema you did a cinema degree, to paint you did a fine art degree, to make software you did a computer science degree ad nauseum.

In 1987 someone who was trained as a sculptor could now create an interactive digital piece of work that explored form, balance, volume, narrative by authoring media types together.

Am I completely wrong here?