What do we mean or what should we mean when we talk of a 'spectator' and a 'spectacle'?
In this post I provide an example of a complexity specific reclassification for the consumer/spectator/user and the content/spectacle/useable.
In this post I provide an example of a complexity specific reclassification for the consumer/spectator/user and the content/spectacle/useable.
The polishing of the terms we typically associated with the consumer/spectatcle/user and the content/spectacle/usable are something I will keep returning to throughout the explorations of Ways 2 Interface, the polishing of these terms is one of the aims of the overall project.
"Ultimately, any term that is employed to refer to the spectator/consumer and spectacle/content variables will in some way always be a simplification, but in order to understand the ongoing interfacing process that occurs between these two variables, we need to be much clearer from the outset about the cognitive and neurological complexity of the spectator/consumer/user and the larger pervasive influence of the spectacle/content/usable beyond its primary component."
What follows is something that I put forth in Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectator. In Appendix A, I formulated two examples of how the user and the usable could be re-conceived to provide a means of discussing them in a more accurate manner.
While I still feel that the Perceiving Participator and the Spectacle Experiencing Situation are far from perfect, I believe they represent a required re-thinking in terms of how we study and discuss the user and the usable; as well as providing an intellectually stimulating counter-balance to the terms with which we are already familiar.
As Ways of Being was a paper written for a Film and Screen Studies degree, the terms are focused on the aesthetic focus of the film experience in their explanations. However, regardless of this, they can just as easily be used to refer to any event that constitutes a spectator or spectacle, user and usable.
I present their explanations here as originally put forth in Ways of Being; and I build on them in accordance with what has already been discussed in this post.
Perceiving Participator
This term makes the consumer/spectator/user an active agent from the outset, regardless of whether they are noticeably or rigorously physically active, it acknowledges the active cognitive negotiation and consideration that is transpiring happening beneath the surface.
Spectacle Experiencing Situation
My complaints with this term are:
"With terms like ‘spectator’, ‘viewer’ and ‘audience member’ there is too much emphasis on passivity and the concept of gazing. Therefore, instead of ‘spectator’, something along the lines of ‘perceiving participator’ should be used as it indicates everything Chapter One has already ventured in regards to the function of a film spectator; through the perceptual membrane that is the audience member’s physical body, a spectator perceives the film text and, on a neurobiological and cognitive basis, actively collaborates in the creation of the filmic experience. A film is unique to each audience member precisely as a result of that active collaboration."
- Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, 2013:110
My major problems with this term are:
- The lack of dashes, so I am going to change that right now: Perceiving-Participator
- It is perceiving and it immediately has associations with sight alone. This is not such a big problem as perceiving can be used to refer to the perception of all the senses. It is also interesting to note that you can just easily replace perceiving with consuming: Consuming-Participator. Interesting?
- While Perceiving-Participator is more obviously active, what is it actually referring to? A Perceiving-Participator could just easily be a computer that is performing calculations based on what it is receiving via its inputs (senses). Maybe a Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator would be better suited?
- Perceiving-Participator? Consuming-Participator? Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator? Cognitively-Consuming-Participator? I am still undecided, we'll see how things go...
Spectacle Experiencing Situation
"With terms like ‘spectacle’, ‘film’, ‘cinema’, ‘film viewing situation’, ‘film experiencing situation’ there are a great deal of redundancies and ambiguities. Beyond celluloid film being discontinued, does ‘film’ refer to just theatrically produced entities or does it also refer to entities produced for television and the internet? Likewise, what is ‘cinema’ referring to: the physical cinema location, an artistic temperament or the industry as a whole? Certainly, when dealing with audio-visual content ‘spectacle’ seems best suited to cover both theatrically and non-theatrically released content, as all audio-visual content is designed to create a spectacle.
However, ‘spectacle’ alone does not adequately cover the means by which a perceiving participator is able to engage with it. As such, the terms ‘film viewing situation’ and ‘film experiencing situation’ have already been used a number of times throughout this paper to refer to the situation (inside and outside the cinema auditorium) where the spectator engages neurobiologically and cognitively with the spectacle content. As has already been pointed out ‘viewing’ needs to be discarded in favour of the broader connotation of ‘experiencing’.
The filmic or spectacle experience is something that is created from collaboration between the spectacle text and the perceiving participator. However, the perceiving participator does not collaborate in its creation based solely on the data provided by the primary spectacle text; rather, there are additional data inputs, e.g. websites, adverts, filmmaker interviews, previous life experiences, original source material, posters, repeats, memes, apps, franchises, similar spectacle texts, etc. that are added into the mix by the perceiving participator.
Ultimately, the perceiving participator is the author of their own individual experience of a spectacle text. As such, the spectacle experiencing situation is an ongoing experience that can begin long before the perceptual participation with the primary spectacle text has even taken place. Likewise, its ability to transpire at any time and in any place emphasises the use of ‘situation’, the ‘situation’ refers to the two necessary attributes: the opportunity where the primary or secondary spectacle text data arises and the active engagement of the perceiving participator.
In light of this, ‘spectacle experiencing situation’ seems best suited to discuss the situation where active cognitive and neurobiological engagement of the perceiving participator takes place with the spectacle text."
- Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, 2013:110-12
Experiencing makes it sound active. Situation frees it from the isolation of a single text or object and allows us to immediately realise a bigger context of influence and interaction with the Perceiving-Participator.
My complaints with this term are:
- The lack of dashes again, let's correct that: Spectacle-Experiencing-Situation
- Spectacle still associates the Experiencing-Situation too tightly to the sense of sight. To this end, Content-Experiencing-Situation frees us from that problem and opens the term up even more and instantly connects with the concept of wanting to attain an ideal from the experience.
- Content-Experiencing-Situation? From the outset, I do prefer this term and will probably use it instead of Spectacle-Experiencing-Situation in future. We'll see how things go...
These terms are something I am going to keep referring to throughout Ways 2 Interface, to see whether or not it is possible to produce accuracy from the outset.
In conclusion
With the Perceiving-Participator and the Spectacle-Experiencing-Situation and, especially so, with the Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator and the Content-Experiencing-Situation, we are attaining something that sounds an awful like the actual-being-within and the perceived-being-without, see Welcome #2Interface.
We have the subjective, but objectified conscious agent/human being.
And the objectified non-conscious entity that only has meaning, agency and subjectivity attributed to it by the conscious agent/human being who perceives, considers and engages with it.
While these terms are more complicated than simply referring to spectators and spectacles/users and useable, they are not as complicated as they could be. I believe they represent a vastly more accurate description of what is transpiring between a user and a useable.
Such terms may not be nessesary for common everyday use, but I believe they are essential when conducting academic or other highly detailed studies of users and usables; as well as providing insightful overviews for creatives and/or enterprisers who wish to employ users and usables for their own ventures.
When you understand something more thoroughly, you can more thoroughly, smartly and innovatively explore and present that particular something.
Ultimately, repositioning the complex relationship of the spectator and the spectacle towards posessing inherent complexity specific accuracy from the outset is done in an endeavour to understand the interface, what is an interface and what is the interfacing process that intertwines the objectified Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator and the Content-Experiencing-Situation, the-actual-being-without-and-the-perceived-being-within.
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In the next post, INTERFACE: What is an Interface?, I will build on what I have discussed here and examine what exactly we are referring to when we talk about an 'interface' - I will begin to elaborate on the 'interfacing process.'
Ultimately, the post will begin to discuss how the interface can enable us to build a better understanding of our ways of being the spectator/consumer/user and the spectacle/content/usable a.k.a the-actual-being-within-and-perceived-being-without.
In conclusion
With the Perceiving-Participator and the Spectacle-Experiencing-Situation and, especially so, with the Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator and the Content-Experiencing-Situation, we are attaining something that sounds an awful like the actual-being-within and the perceived-being-without, see Welcome #2Interface.
We have the subjective, but objectified conscious agent/human being.
The actual-being-within - the Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator
And the objectified non-conscious entity that only has meaning, agency and subjectivity attributed to it by the conscious agent/human being who perceives, considers and engages with it.
The perceived-being-without - the Content-Experiencing-Situation
While these terms are more complicated than simply referring to spectators and spectacles/users and useable, they are not as complicated as they could be. I believe they represent a vastly more accurate description of what is transpiring between a user and a useable.
"To say nothing of the corporeal influence, every audience member willingly enters a film viewing situation with a plethora of preconceptions and other unrelated mental data drawn from an individual life experience which they cognitively apply to the film experience – every audience member experiences a film differently and produces their own filmic experience."
- Ways of Being, 2013:38-9
Such terms may not be nessesary for common everyday use, but I believe they are essential when conducting academic or other highly detailed studies of users and usables; as well as providing insightful overviews for creatives and/or enterprisers who wish to employ users and usables for their own ventures.
When you understand something more thoroughly, you can more thoroughly, smartly and innovatively explore and present that particular something.
Ultimately, repositioning the complex relationship of the spectator and the spectacle towards posessing inherent complexity specific accuracy from the outset is done in an endeavour to understand the interface, what is an interface and what is the interfacing process that intertwines the objectified Cognitively-Perceiving-Participator and the Content-Experiencing-Situation, the-actual-being-without-and-the-perceived-being-within.
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In the next post, INTERFACE: What is an Interface?, I will build on what I have discussed here and examine what exactly we are referring to when we talk about an 'interface' - I will begin to elaborate on the 'interfacing process.'
Ultimately, the post will begin to discuss how the interface can enable us to build a better understanding of our ways of being the spectator/consumer/user and the spectacle/content/usable a.k.a the-actual-being-within-and-perceived-being-without.
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