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An Interactive Project With No Rules?
psydii writes: "Matt Deegan is running an interesting project to explore the nature of the concept of 'interactivity'. Is it really neccesary to have projects that are only limited by the users' minds, or is there a need to provide rules and routes that must be obeyed?" This is actually extremely nifty.
An interesting idea to say the least. The basic run-down: each visitor is presented with a website, seemingly at random. They are then asked to select another website that they feel is related to the one displayed. As the site states, visitors are free to be as obvious or obscure as they like. The next visitor to the website is presented with the website the first visitor chose, and so on. (Not sure how it keeps track of the thread; what if two people access the site before the first is done making his or her selection? Does the path fork? Then which path is presented to the next visitor?)
I'm really fascinated by what the end product will be. I imagine it will be something like the stories we used to write in English class: each student would type out a sentence on their computer, then get up and move to the computer to their right and type another sentence, and so forth around the room. When we were done, we would read "our" story to the class. Most of the time they ended up being one step above gibberish, but every now and then a really fascinating plot would develop.
I wish the site didn't limit visitors to a single site selection. I would be interested in the a long path of related sites a user would follow. But this will be cool anyway. Everyone should add to this project!
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
Along those lines, people may find Nomic interesting, a game where the participants make up the rules as they go along. You can find information here and here.
Well the project was just skipping along at a nice pace until the /. affect kicked in. Bloody hell. Thanks for all your emails, i'm sorry if the links were broken or there were problems with ASP, it all seems to be working now. The discussion so far about the nature of interactivity's been fun, part of the project is to see *if* people do follow the rule. Personally I thought people would be posting their own websites and there would be more porn, but generally people do follow the rule. I believe that users only like something if there is some direction. How many of you that have played have returned to see what the next person linked to? Matt. who has to hand this in nect Monday arrgghh!