Towards Ludic Interfaces

On interface, information and meaning, or... What is Buddha smiling about? by Carlos de Azambuja Rodrigues

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle i, Sigmund Freud wrote: "Let us imagine a living organism in its most simplified form, such as a nondifferentiated bladder of a substance that is susceptible to stimulation. Thus, the surface turned outward, to the external world, by its very situation will become differentiated and serve as an organ for receiving stimuli... This small fragment of living substance is found suspended in an external world that is charged with the most powerful energy and would die because of the stimuli that emanates from it, lest it possessed a protective shield against such stimuli." (Freud, page 39) This external world Freud is referring to means, therefore, everything that is not the organism. It is the physical and material environment that surrounds it, where the organism is inserted and from which it differentiates itself by means of a protective shield. This shield differentiates and protects the organism, while allowing it to communicate with the forces in the surrounding environment. Would it be exaggerated to identify this "shield" as a kind of interface? Would not our bodies, any body, be the first meaning precedence and maybe even importance interface? Interface, if one uses the meaning given to it by informatics, can remit to several different instances of the same system: it can mean the kinds of connections between diverse hardware devices and can also refer to the increasing level of successive compilations and interpretations realized by different programming languages. However, we tend to reduce its meaning to indicate that which is offered to a subject the user as a point of contact with a system closed within itself, with a differentiated corpus: the computer. We may be able to affirm that this is probably due to the implicit knowledge even if unconscious of the essential importance of man in the production of

technologies and, consequently, in the definition of its many meanings. Thus, when one speaks of interface nowadays, we are immediately remitted to what the informatics jargon calls GUI (Graphics User Interface)ii. It is clear that the contemporary scene, where technology has taken a front position, explains and justifies this approach. Every time we hear the word interface, it remits us to technology. However, beyond the man-machine relation, what can an interface mean? In a simple definition, interface can be considered as a meeting point, a common plane between two different bodies or environments. It will, at the same time, be the means through which these two bodies will communicate and also the very mark of the difference between them. We should, however, ask ourselves: why were we not preoccupied, at least until the advent of the technological era, in defining our relation with all things with basis on this concept? Would this intellectual acquisition be due to something new offered by technology or, quite the contrary, it arose due to a lacking, something that was missing in digital technological devices? A body in the world relates to other beings in a more or less promiscuous way: we inhale, exhale, ingest, excrete, penetrate and let ourselves be penetrated by many things. Some of these acts have a vital quality, since there is no life at least in forms more complex than viruses and bacteria without breathing, feeding, excretion and sex. Most of these actions make sense, having as their final goal survival itself. Whenever they do not demand any reflection for their execution, they are called instinctive. These are acts in which the body does not move apart from other bodies; on the contrary, it often seeks, sometimes uncontrollably, a certain fusion: the air, something outside of me that I unconsciously suck in; the lovers, who grab and penetrate each other; the food, which I hungrily chew. Instead of paying attention to our differences during these acts, we would rather ignore them. It is all played out as if, in order to survive, we need to let go of the differentiation before others, acquiring, at least for the duration of the experience, the illusion of an integration with the other, the nullifying of one's own being now

involved with another in a single event, in a single action, in a single space-and-time, in a single existence. It is a moment in which human beings could experience when hunger is satiated, during a deep breath, during an orgasm a sense of plenitude, of complete involvement and integration with that which is outside. In these moments there is no interface. At least it becomes absolutely transparent, invisible and, therefore, indescribable. Would the impossibility of remaining in this interpenetration of bodies, the failure of this fusion of things (due to the fact that, after these encounters, they remain apart and unequal), would this frustration be the thing that always makes us glimpse the limits and the solitude of being, and also what makes us perceive the interfaces? Could it be that an interface is born of the acknowledgement of the other and, at the same time, precisely of the impossibility of being this other? Would not the concept of interface be related to the strangeness of the difference rather than the natural desire of overcoming it? And, what seems most interesting: if this is correct if the concept of interface is more related to a strangeness in the regime of difference would hybridism be an attempt to nullify, or even not to establish, interface itself? It is interesting to point out that both the strangeness (affirmation) and the ignorance (negation) of the difference, while not playing the same role in the exchange of information between different things, at least always lend some sense (and, we must remember, a goal) to the encounter. That is why even noise, that which is missing from an information, can always clarify something to me regarding the other I am communicating with. Thus, the different meanings of events and things are constructed by something that occurs during the very encounters (or divergences) and also by information obtained from them. Everything takes places, in the beautiful words of Jean Brun wrote in The Hand and The Spiritiii (BRUN, J., 1991):

"Every hand that grasps must first choose its prey. Every hand that touches discovers that the surface is the threshold of a depth that remains inaccessible. The hand that molds does not give life..." He concludes: "...That is why every hand that manipulates and transforms materials, every grasp that results in undertakings where the utensil makes possible to jettison the hand, must not let us forget that which is simple, profoundly tragic and truly meaningful in the gesture of a man that reaches out with his hand, wanting to hold someone else's hand, with the purpose of arriving at an experience whose own impossibility clarifies it meaning". (BRUN, p. 15) However, when this observation is transposed to the context of digital technologies, we know beforehand that, in a virtual environment, in cyberspace, one can never actually touch someone else's hand. There will always be an interactive device a mouse, a screen, a keyboard that will translate my movements and animate the interface according to my actions. It is in this dance that, just like a demure lady that follows the lead of a gentleman, a graphic interface will realize and reveal itself. Every meaning is born of this dis-position (change of position) on the part of the user, which dis-poses of the interface in a com-position (a mutual dis-position) that reveals something previously occult and absent (virtual) in each new movement. In this dance, the gentleman must lead the lady, who must follow his movements lest she interrupts their relationship. Thus, the interface is obliged, even in its passive modesty, to always respond to each action on the part of the user, otherwise the user can consider it too frigid frozen and give up the dance. It has happened to every one of us: we all have had, at least once, to restart our computer. Why do we use a metaphor of interactive dance? Simply because we are (wrongly) accustomed to consider the relation with a determined system and its interface from the standpoint of what we suppose it immediately offers as information. This

approach originated not only in Computer Ergonomics but also in the work of many communication theoreticians. We do not give the appropriate attention to several new meanings that can emerge during the very phenomenon of interface interaction. And it is here that another question comes up and unveils itself: why do we interact? Why, regardless of an immediate necessity or finality (in the restricted sense of the Aristotelian causa finalis) do we accept or are compelled to interact? It may go without saying that it is from the body of the user that emanates the energy that will set the couple in movement, since it is the user that leads the dance and gives it meaning. Thus, the living body and its precious energy are indispensable and therefore not obsolete despite what some hybridites may think. However, why is the user pre-disposed to spend his energy? Is there not a tendency in people to do just the opposite, to save energy? Let us see what Charlie Platt wrote in an interesting article about Interactive Entertainment, published in the magazine Wirediv a few years ago. (Platt, 1995) "Consider the following modern American domestic scene. Jane and Joe have finished work. They pick up their kids at the day-care center and go home. After dealing with colleagues and bosses all day long, the young couple must now deal with the kids' arguments. Finally, when the kids fall asleep, Joe and Jane turn on the TV or pop a video in the VCR. They have been making decisions and interacting with people ever since they got up in the morning. Do they really want an interactive entertainment? In fact, they do not wish to interact with anything now. They may consider that it's not their job to entertain themselves so they pay a screenwriter, a director and a few actors to do it for them. Like many couples, after an exhaustive day Jane and Joe want to be entertained." (Platt, p. 147-148)

The right to leisure is sacred. In fact, it was a victory of work over capital many years before there were talking of creative idleness a favorite topic of some shrewd large-corporation consultantsv. However, if human beings actually tend to save energy the so-called "law of the lesser effort" what could make them spend it if not, for example, an occasional imperative necessity such as sending "income tax files" over the internet? Maybe the answer to this question lies in the same metaphor we used before... The Dance. We agree to participate in an interaction with the interface and often are attracted not only by its beauty produced by an artist but also by the promised entertainment to be found in the very act of interacting. But what is this dance? Well, dancing is a playful activity. Thus, we could say that interactivity, beyond everything it may represent as a means for presenting and making information accessible, is essentially a playful activity. We must be always induced and seduced to interact, and playfulness is the main strategy if not the only one to make someone manipulate an interface and, by doing so, spend energy. Therefore, aside from being intuitive and functional, good interfaces must also be playful interfaces. They must offer something fun something different from what seems to be their immediate finality (their immediate causa finalis). However, something curious happens with amusing things: whatever is entertaining is also, most of the time, useless. And this could also be said about discussions on the meaning of things... But, since we often invoke it here for we consider the issue of meaning fundamental to understanding the role of interactivity in the context of digital technologies people in general often seek entertainment. So, if we can affirm that interactivity is the very mode of realization (of becoming present) of the technological virtual, we can also affirm that... The Ludic consists of a strategic invitation: it is the principal way to induce someone to interact with a new techno-virtual environment (an interface) in the context of digital technologies.

For no other reason, for example, what remained as an economically relevant activity of the boom of interactive multi-media the CD-ROM fever of the late 90's was the game industry. Children, more than anybody, know what fun it is to play. Whenever they hear music, they begin to dance... This slightly childish, irresponsible behavior is at the root of risk, of the avatars, of the many forms of virtualization found nowadays in our culture: from war to the economy based on financial market oscillations, everything these days looks like a big game. Even children, or puppies that playfully bite each other, know there is a profound difference between playful hurting and real hurting, between makebelieve death and real death. So, it is necessary to emphasize that, instead of being a way of alienation or confusion between reality and imagination, between virtual and real, playfulness is essentially a way of learning a way of understanding oneself and the world, of learning truths and, thus, seeing and producing hidden meanings in things. So, if we understand a simulation, interface in a broader sense, as a way for reaffirming a truth precisely because of what we know it lacks namely, the group of hidden potencies of Nature that renews itself with every new discovery then the Playful in digital technologies begins to have the same function given to it by Thomas Aquinas, a function well explained by Professor Jean Lauand, of the Philosophy and Education Sciences Department of USP, in the following excerpts: (Lauand, 2000)vi "'Lude et age conceptiones tuas' ('Play and realize your discoveries')... is an invitation to man with his limited intelligence to enter the game of Verbum... discovering its pieces, its meaning: the 'playful logic' of Logo Ludens." Or, further on: "Affirming 'Logo Ludens' is affirming 'contemplatio' the delight of knowledge that is an end in itself , a contemplation that is the means and the end of the education proposed by Aquinas. But the acknowledgement of Logo Ludens also brings along a sense of mistery... That is, the playing of a man that seeks knowledge must also mean the acknowledgement of this essential note in Thomas' view of the world: the mystery." (Lauand, 2000)

If the raison d'tre of playfulness the Logo Ludens is where "the sense of mystery" is also kept, nothing more appropriate than introducing this concept in the discussion of a phenomenological sense, like the one we are developing here. But we should also emphasize the importance of this concept pertaining digital technologies, something that, in my opinion, has been neglected by those who think about these technologies both in the field of Design or Communication. Playfulness is an extremely pregnant concept in the fields of Pedagogy and Art, but it is not restricted to them. It can, and should, also be reflected upon, at least concerning techno-virtual technologies, by those in the field of Communication and Design. After all, it is in playfulness that lays the most profound issue related to the Virtual, the issue of meaning: the origin and the end of the flow of things that, arriving from this "don't-know-where", comes to us incessantly. Experiencing playfulness is, therefore, moving closer to the Mystery of Thomas Aquinas, or to the "Truth" of Heidegger. This happens because, while playing, even newborns (human or not) perceive, unconsciously or not, what Johan Huzing warned us about in his Homo Ludens: (Huizinga, 1999)vii "The essence of the ludic is found in the sentence 'there is something at play.'" (Huizinga, p. 35) What is at play is not only a survival exercise in animal games or the acquiring of knowledge found in a game where human animals can learn. It can also be something else. Something like the first game ever invented by men: the game of denomination, of giving names to things. Or, as Huizinga also points out: (Huizinga, op. cit., 1999) "It is language that allows man to distinguish things, to define them, to establish them, in sum, to designate them and, with this designation, elevate them to the domains of the spirit. In the creation of speech and language, it is as if the spirit were constantly leaping between matter and thought."

He concludes: "Behind every abstract expression lies a hidden metaphor, and every metaphor is a word play. Thus, by giving expression to life, man creates another world, a poetic world beside that of nature." (Huizinga, p. 7) Well... Since interfaces and simulations can be, before anything, playful, should we not require the construction of a more poetic techno-virtual? Should we not, as artists, require the opening of a field of possibilities of signification in cyberspace, something that goes beyond the mere access to information and is not limited to an empirical analysis of the potentialities of a technological device? Or should we get lost in a somewhat obvious affirmation of a functionality as insists the narrow view of Computer Ergonomics in the field of Design? Or, furthermore, should we get lost in the discussion of an sterile technological determinism that sometimes disregards other issues that do not stem exclusively from the explicit characteristics of the device itself something that happens, to this day, in a very pregnant approach in some Communications study circles? In both cases, however, the issue of meaning (the raison d'tre of something) should always reappear, like the Playful dummy that always stands upright no matter how many times it gets knocked to the ground. This is due to the fact that, wherever a technology that brings people together is discussed, wherever one reflects upon an environment where men interact, that is its rightful place: there, a discussion on meaning will be established, the search for something true. Thus, before offering us an easy access to information and displaying technological novelties, techno-virtual interfaces are playful: they can teach us something fundamental even if it is not explicit, even if it is unnamable about the joy of living. Something that, I suspect, is what makes the famous statue of the Sitting Buddha which I saw the other day in a friend's house smile... After all...

What is Buddha smiling about?

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FREUD, Sigmund. Alm do Princpio do Prazer e Casos Clnicos. Rio e Janeiro, Imago, 1975.
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All ergonomic research on interfaces (Computer Ergonomics, Usability, etc.) surrenders to the fact that it is man or its simplifying variable, the user who is at the center of this issue. BRUN, Jean. A Mo e o Esprito. Lisboa, Biblioteca de Filosofia Contempornea Edies 70, 1991.

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iv

PLATT, C. Interactive Entertainment.Who writes it? Who reads it? Who needs it? Wired. September 1995, p.145.

LAFARGUE, Paul. O Direito Preguia. So Paulo, Kairs Liv. e Editora, 1980 The Right to Idleness is the title of a booklet by Paul Lafargue, the mixed-race son-inlaw of Marx, who, as a socialist militant, fought for the "Huit heures de Sommeil, huit heures de Travail e huit heures de Loisir". It is sad to observe that, nowadays, in this time of restoration of a most savage capitalism, a growing mass of workers is forced to idleness as a consequence of unemployment. In these circumstances, idleness must really be extremely creative for a head of family. It seems not by chance that Domenico de Massi preaches his ideas to company executives.

vi

LAUAND, L. Jean . Deus Ludens - O Ldico no Pensamento de Toms de Aquino e na Pedagogia Medieval. Texto de Prova Pblica de Erudio para Concurso de Professor Titular da USP, in: < http://www.hottopos.com/notand7/jeanludus.htm> ( accessed in March 2004 )

vii

HUIZINGA, Johan, Homo Ludens. 4ed. So Paulo, Editora Perspectiva,1999.

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