operative knowledge/interaction notes

here are some notes from our last (and first!) interactive scripting class:

We train to the medium and the medium trains to us.

Knowledge has a biological function, and arises out of action

Knowledge is basically “operative”–it is about change and transformation.

“Operative” knowledge is knowing about and learning from “what happens when I (or it, or they, etc.) do….”

Knowledge consists of cognitive structures.

Development proceeds by the assimilation of the environment to these structures, and the accommodation of these structures to the environment.

Movement to higher levels of development (knowledge) depends on “reflecting abstraction,” which means coming to know properties of one’s own actions, and coming to know the ways in which they are coordinated with other’s actions, and how one’s actions influence, and are influenced by, another’s actions and cognitive structures.

Interaction is a relationship of mutual influence.

Interaction can increase operative knowledge when it raises awareness of the degree to which one has influence over something while at the same time understanding how that something is influencing one’s self.

Our sense of identity, down to our recollections, beliefs, ‘private’ feelings, etc., may be evoked responses – aspects of a persistent, collective interaction with our environment, highly dependent on the moment, environment, and interactions occurring at a given moment. We may not, in other words, carry our memories, and specific personality traits as static objects into an environment. They may be, instead, patterns of responses evoked via interaction within a given moment, and within a specific environment.

Different affects and qualities of experience (including, it seems, memory, and other ‘private’ mental events) are evoked by interaction with specific combinations of environmental elements.

Interactive artists and designers benefit from careful study of the qualities of interaction that are evoked within given environments, and must think broadly about which combinations of elements, including human participants, gizmos, nature, etc., seem to evoke which qualities and understandings.

Development, and the resulting qualities of that development, proceeds by the assimilation of the environment to this knowledge and its related structures, and the accommodation of these structures by to environment.

We adapt to the medium and the medium adapts to us.

Internal/external paradigms are useful but one must bear in mind that interaction goes both ways, so that, ultimately, consciousness exists at a midway point between the internal and external.