Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Clicking for Godot: In The World Of Interactive Art, Everyone's Waiting For The Next Shakespeare -- Or At Least Hoping That Computers Can Deliver A Good Time. By Scott Rosenberg, Salon (1997). Interactive artists -- whether they produce CD-ROM movie-games or "serious hypertext," Web sites or live performances -- want to use digital technology to share some of the power of creation with what used to be called their audience. The technology offers a kaleidoscope of new possibilities for participation and collaboration. In the past, artists who wanted to play around like this were limited to small groups in their immediate community; today, technology lets interactive artists reach a potentially mass-scale audience. And so they dream of what was once an impossibility: improvisation on a global scale; art with the depth of a classic, the immediacy of a video game and the reach of TV. But there's one problem they're still struggling to solve. How do you cede some measure of control or authority to the audience, reader, listener, "user" -- yet still deliver a work that's expressive, moving, memorable, satisfying? 11:27:48 AM    comment []

Britain May Have Had Lasagna Before Italy, by Sue Leeman, AP. British researchers . . . claim to have found a British recipe for lasagna dating from the 14th century — long before Italian chefs came up with the delicious concoction of layers of pasta topped with cheese. This is the first recorded recipe for a lasagna-based dish,,/i> David Crompton, one of the researchers, said Tuesday. The Italian dish has tomatoes, which were only discovered two centuries later in the New World." 3:26:30 AM    comment []