WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Max Whitby, Founding Director
The MultiMedia Corp.

Back in February 1991, an interesting meeting took place over two days at Laguna Beach in Southern California. It was a small conference organized by Bob Stein from the Voyager Company and Steve Gano from the Apple Multimedia Lab. The event was held under the auspices of the Aspen Institute and sponsored by the Markle Foundation.

At the meeting, around 20 producers and authors of interactive multimedia gathered to discuss the state of our emerging art. A small number of works were shown, and the focus of the conversation was almost exclusively on design. It was a rare and valuable opportunity to put aside for a while questions of technology or marketing and to consider the new medium simply as a form of communication in its own right.

MAYBE IT WON’T WORK

It soon became apparent during the early discussions that a ghost was haunting the proceedings like the unhappy spirit of Banquo in Macbeth. The ghost was endlessly repeating the same refrain, discouraging anyone from being too enthusiastic about the new medium. The ghost was whispering: “Interactive multimedia may not work.”

We are now several years into the current wave of computer-driven multimedia development. A great many talented refugees from the film, television, print publishing, videodisc, games and software industries have been plugging away at this new genre now for quite some time. At least a hundred projects have been completed: some as published products, others as one-off R&D design examples shown at trade shows and conferences.

Effort, enthusiasm and millions. The stark truth is that, despite such an intense period of effort and enthusiasm on the part of a diverse and talented group, and despite millions of dollars spent developing multimedia products, the end results are frankly disappointing.

As someone said in opening remarks at the Laguna Beach conference, there is as yet not one shining example of interactive multimedia that can be held up high with the unequivocal pronouncement, “This is what all the fuss is about!”

Perhaps we need a little longer to come up with our equivalent of Birth of a Nation. Perhaps the current machines are still not powerful enough or sufficiently specialized to deliver the right experience. But is it also possible, as the ghost was trying to warn us, that the central premise of the new medium may be flawed?

Fine fledglings. Let me immediately acknowledge that some fine and important work has certainly been done. Robert Winter’s Companion Series to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Cosmic Osmo, Spaceship Warlock, The Visual Almanac, Life Story, Guernica, Ulysses, Treasures of the Smithsonian and Verbum Interactive (to name but a few) are all powerful and successful examples of the fledgling genre.

But if we are honest, we must acknowledge that most of them are flawed in one way or another: by slow access times, by complex and confusing interfaces and above all by the need for an eloquent and persuasive demonstrator to show them off to best effect.

TO USE IN ANGER

The experience of seeing these projects presented by their creators (in effect a linear performance) is often much more satisfying than sitting down to use the product and getting angry. Excellent as these titles are in their very different ways, none of them yet seem to me to fulfill the fundamental promise of interactive multimedia.

Perhaps this “fundamental promise” is merely a delusion: a false expectation of what can be achieved on a computer. But if so, I believe it is a widely shared delusion that lies at the heart of the instant appeal that the very idea of interactive multimedia has for so many people. The basic premise of combining the two most powerful communications technologies of our century — television and computers — must surely lead to a new medium greater than either of its two component parts.

Engaging and interactive. Speaking personally, it was precisely the exciting appeal of this marriage that persuaded me in 1988 to divert my career in broadcast television towards the uncharted but alluring territory of interactive multimedia.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had a simple vision of what successful new media products would be like. They would have all the engagement of good television, but, thanks to the computer, they would also be interactive: people could explore any aspects of a given subject by moving seamlessly through a landscape of information with the help of appropriate software.

‘HOPELESSLY NAIVE’

Looking back, this premise now seems to me so hopelessly naive that today I have considerable difficulty even formulating it! Having spent a good part of my life in film cutting rooms and video editing suites, I should hardly need reminding of how much effort and attention goes into constructing a coherent narrative path through a story.

Yet, in interactive media there is an unstated assumption that such careful preparation can safely be discarded. Indeed, I have sometimes heard it suggested that the editorial viewpoint expressed in a linear medium like film or television is undesirably dictatorial, and that interactive multimedia at last promises to give the viewer unfettered access to “pure information.”

Who wants pure information? In many ways, this is, of course, pure nonsense. If I stop to think about it, most of the time when consuming information, I want that information to be selected and organized so that I can comprehend it efficiently. I want it presented to me in a meaningful order by someone knowledgeable. Usually, I do not wish to be forced to make executive decisions every few minutes about what I might like to see next.

There are exceptions to this rule. If I am approaching a subject in an educational or research context, then it can be very valuable to “take apart” the information with which I am being presented. Then I will welcome the ability to discover related material or to go back to extended sources. Then I will be happy to make a high level of input to direct my learning experience.

THE LINEAR EXPERIENCE

But at other times, when I am being entertained or simply informed, linear presentation has much to recommend itself. Above all, it allows me to enter an active state of psychological engagement with the material (unfairly maligned as “couch potato mode”) which is highly efficient and which is disrupted by the need to make frequent choices.

For myself, as I continue to produce interactive multimedia titles, I am returning to the linear as the foundation for much of my work. I do not claim that this is the only way forward: Moss Landing (an intriguing prototype produced by Fabrice Florin at Apple Computer) and Spaceship Warlock (by Reactor Inc.) both succeed by raising the interactive stakes and immersing audiences in their different worlds with virtual-reality-like interfaces.

Nevertheless, I believe there is much to be done by using the interactive potential of the computer to enhance fundamentally linear experiences. Pedro Meyer’s “I Photograph to Remember,” which at its heart involves no interaction, is a powerful inspiration in this regard. The challenge now is to extend the medium with limited interaction that preserves the emotional integrity of the narrative form. Perhaps then the Laguna Beach ghost can be laid to rest.

The London-based MultiMedia Corp. is an associated company of the British Broadcasting Corp., producing and publishing multimedia titles.