digital creativity back to the future: interactivity and associational narrativity at the bauhaus

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Los Angeles]On: 26 September 2010Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 923037182]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Digital CreativityPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t714576173

Back to the future: interactivity and associational narrativity at theBauhausPhillip Pragera

a Cambridge University, UK

To cite this Article Prager, Phillip(2006) 'Back to the future: interactivity and associational narrativity at the Bauhaus',Digital Creativity, 17: 4, 195 — 204To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14626260601073195URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14626260601073195

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t714576173

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14626260601073195

http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

Digital Creativity 2006, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 195–204

1462-6268/06/1704-0195$20.00

Back to the future: interactivity and associational narrativity at the BauhausPhillip Prager

Cambridge University, UK

[email protected]

1 IntroductionIn his ‘Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus’ (1998), Pelle Ehn looks back to Weimar Germany’s revolutionary art and architectural school as an educational model for digital interaction design. New media designers, Ehn suggests, should seek inspiration from the Bauhaus’ interdisciplinary art education and integration of the creative arts, industry and technology. Aesthetically, though, Ehn regards the Bauhaus as firmly placed within modernist paradigms,

a democratic failure diminished to an elitist program of ‘hard’ regular geometric white shapes in steel, glass and reinforced concrete.(Ehn 2002, p.19)

The following exploration suggests, however, that the Bauhaus offers inspiration for inter-action design beyond this aesthetic. Many strands within the school transcend rigid modernism, and various artists conducted experiments in film, installation art and theatre that remain relevant to postmodern theory as well as current discussion and practice in in-teractivity, virtual dramatic environments and digital narrativity.

At the Bauhaus, László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943) and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack (1893–1965) developed models and theories about what now appear as key features of contemporary media practice. They experimented with ka-leidoscopic, associational and reconfigurable narratives, used spatial mapping as a fram-ing device; and created dynamic machines which, comparable to computers, were placed between projection and material. Their goal

Abstract

This paper contextualises the themes of inter-activity and associational narrativity within a wider historical trajectory, by examining projects conducted at the Bauhaus during the 1920s. Bauhaus artists such as László Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer developed models and theories for cinema, theatre and installation art, which sought to surrender authorial con-trol and engage the audience as a creative force. As contemporary artists continue to debate how to transform interactivity into an aesthetically compelling rather than participa-tory activity, Bauhaus projects, with their focus on associational narratives and awareness of embodied cognition, offer inspiration for cur-rent practice.

Keywords: associational narrative, Bauhaus, embodied cognition, interactivity, media in transition

dc174195.indd 195 10/10/06 12:53:06 PM

Downloaded By: [University of California, Los Angeles] At: 23:57 26 September 2010

Dig

ital C

reat

ivity

, Vol

. 17,

No.

4Prager

196

from the margins. Some projections develop the plot, and increase in size; while others are transformed into smaller, ambient, im-ages—a lingering thought or a memory; and elsewhere, an intimate, open-frame close-up may be juxtaposed against a much longer shot from a different point-of-view. Such dynamic projections are a contemporary version of Polycinema, using digital technology to solve the Bauhaus problem of creating an interactive environment. They open vast possibilities for developing psychological tension, associational story-telling and interesting formal rhythms. Furthermore, the way in which the Polycin-ema can subvert traditional cinematic linearity and use spatial mapping to create an adequate diegetic illusion exemplifies, to a large extent, what Janet Murray refers to (72 years later) as a

was the ‘total theatre’, an immersive space, in which

the totality of the interrelated references of light, colour, sound, movement, form, plane, man—all the possible variations and pos-sible combinations among them—result in a work of art becoming an organism

and which allows the interactor totake part in the creative process on an initia-tive basis.(Moholy-Nagy 1927, p.300)

Their basic problem was the creation of a two-way communication channel between media and audience, thereby anticipating the con-temporary quest for what Grahame Weinbren (1995, p.408) calls the ‘responsive represen-tation machine’, a computer that facilitates narratives more interesting and engaging than interactivity based on branching models or cause-and-effect participation.

2 Kaleidoscopic narratives and spatial mapping

One of Moholy’s concerns at the Bauhaus was to legitimise film as an independent art, elevate the audience from its passivity, and create a cinematic logic that more ap-propriately reflects the increasing informa-tion-density of modern life. In his publication Painting photography film (1925), he develops ideas for what he calls the Polycinema, an installation-piece in which there are several circular projections simultaneously moving across a projection-space at different speeds and angles, exploring a variety of related micro-narratives. The spatial orientation of the individual film-spots changes, according to the narrative progression, overlapping at times, or even merging, only to separate again later on.

Manuela (Prager 2005), a recent experi-mental short film, puts Moholy’s model into practice, exploring a summer flirtation through multiple projections on a single screen. The circular film-spots change in size and spa-tial orientation—they may fade in, or enter

Figure 1. László Moholy-Nagy, Polycinema (from Moholy-Nagy, L. (1925 ) Painting photography film).

Figure 2. Phillip Prager, screenshot from Manuela (2005), a short film based on the Polycinema.

dc174195.indd 196 10/10/06 12:53:06 PM


197

Digital C

reativity, Vol. 17, N

o. 4Back to the future: interactivity and associational narrativity at the Bauhaus

the kaleidoscopic power of the computer allows us to tell stories that more truly reflect our turn-of-the-century sensibility. We no longer believe in a single reality, a single integrating view of the world, or even the reliability of a single angle of perception.(Murray 1997, p.161)

This postmodern sensibility embraces notions of an embodied mind and distributed con-sciousness, in which reality emerges through the interaction between human and world. Our vision, for example, provides no objective image of reality, because the retinal image is automatically interpreted by a range of percep-tual mechanisms—which can turn two rapidly flashing lights into a perception of continuous movement. Proponents of embodied cognition, (Maturana and Varela 1980; Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991; Lakoff and Johnson 1999), argue that the mind is inextricably linked to the idiosyncrasies of the human body and can-not be understood through introspection; nor can it aspire to pure rationality—it is embod-ied and creates reality just as it transforms two flashing lights into a continuous movement.

Such principles of visual organisation and notions of embodiment had their roots in the Gestalt psychology of interwar Ger-many, when Bauhaus contemporaries, such as Wolfgang Köhler (1922), Max Wertheimer (1925) and Kurt Koffka (1935), were begin-ning to unravel the complex ways in which humans subconsciously interpret visual stimuli and perceive whole figures, Gestalts, rather than isolated parts; in fact, the example of the rapidly flashing lights was first described in 1912 by Wertheimer. While the mechani-cal, computational model of the mind reigned from the 1940s to the 1970s, and has perhaps obliterated our perception of the past, the Bauhaus, in many ways, celebrated human idiosyncrasies of perception, and the interde-pendent relationship between human organism and world. Moholy-Nagy is certainly aware of principles of embodiment, when he dis-cusses the ‘conceptual’ rather than ‘objective’

kaleidoscopic story with multiple points of view.(Murray 1997, p.155–62)

The Polycinema also anticipates Lev Manovi-ch’s observation that, in new media,

the logic of replacement, characteristic of cinema, gives way to the logic of addition and co-existence. Time becomes spatialised, distributed over the surface of the screen.(Manovich 2002, p.71)

Neither for Manovich nor for Moholy-Nagy does this logic of co-existence simply refer to parallel narratives. Manovich sees great potential for integrating looping ele-ments with sequential progression to create interesting forms of spatial montage—an idea that Moholy-Nagy, too, recognizes when he writes of the ‘novel effects’ that can be achieved

by starting again from the beginning and projecting extra prints of the running film-strip on to the screen through projectors standing next to one another.(Moholy-Nagy 1925, p.43)

These parallels are not merely of coin-cidental nature, for despite their 70–80 year separation, Moholy, Manovich and Murray provide very similar arguments to recommend such kaleidoscopic and spatially-organised narratives. When Manovich argues that

if, from a city street to a web page, we are surrounded by highly dense information sur-faces, it is appropriate to expect from cinema a similar logic(Manovich 2002, p.73)

he is echoing Moholy-Nagy’s observation that the vast development both of technique and of the big cities has increased the capacity of our perceptual organs for simultaneous acoustical and optical activity.(Moholy-Nagy 1925, p.43)

Philosophically, they share a similar out-look, that sets itself apart from the Cartesian world-view, in which the rational human oper-ates within an independently-existing exterior world. Murray argues that

dc174195.indd 197 10/10/06 12:53:07 PM


Dig

ital C

reat

ivity

, Vol

. 17,

No.

4Prager

198

nature of human vision (1925, p. 28). When he speaks of

the wholeness of life…a synthesis of all the vital impulses spontaneously forming itself into the all-embracing Gesamtwerk (life) which abolishes all isolation, in which all individual accomplishments proceed from a biological necessity and culminate in a universal necessity(Moholy-Nagy 1925, p.17)

Moholy-Nagy is articulating a holistic world-view similar to ‘autopoiesis’, a concept introduced by Maturana and Varela in 1980. Autopoiesis describes life, and humans, as complex, self-organising systems, in which reality is enacted through dynamic networks of processes, in which no change occurs in isolation, but results in continual reconfigura-tions of these networks.

Moholy-Nagy uses such holistic concepts to distinguish his Gesamtwerk from Richard Wagner’s nineteenth-century ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) (1925, p.17), which sought to synthesise music, thea-tre and visual arts—but reduced the audience’s role to complete passivity, by orchestrating its point of attention through meticulously planned seating arrangements and use of light-ing. In Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk

the public, that representative of daily life,

forgets the confines of the auditorium, and lives and breathes now only in the artwork which seems to it as Life itself, and on the stage which seems the wide expanse of the whole World.(Wagner 1849, p.185)

Moholy-Nagy regards such a Wagnerian inte-gration of arts as merely an

addition, albeit an organized one ... along-side and separated from which life flows by(Moholy-Nagy 1925, p.17)

it fails to involve the audience as a creative force, and activate its consciousness. Without adequate technologies, however, Moholy-Nagy had to struggle to deliver his participa-tive Gesamtwerk. Projection facilities were wholly inadequate to realize the full potential of the Polycinema, and certainly no interface could be established to facilitate true interac-tivity.

Nonetheless, Moholy-Nagy and his col-league Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack did create elaborate machines that compute and reconfig-ure abstract narratives, and involve the audi-ence in a deeply visceral way, by manipulating its sense of kinesthesia, and depth and colour perception. One such machine is the Reflected Colour Display by Hirschfeld-Mack, which Moholy-Nagy (1921) discusses in conjunc-tion with Polycinema (1925, pp.80–83). The Reflected Colour Display presents a model for a reconfigurable abstract narrative based on light, sound, colour and form. It consists of several movable light-sources of different colours and luminosity, projected through a shifting set of templates to create a

fugue-like, firmly articulated experience which shall proceed at any given time from a specific theme of coloured forms.(Hirschfeld-Mack, quoted in Moholy-Nagy 1925, p.81)

Hirschfeld-Mack recognised the problem of maintaining a diegetic illusion for his kalei-doscopic narrative, and used acoustical means to provide a narrative frame. His investiga-tions into the relationship between film and

Figure 3. Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Reflected Colour Display, 1921, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/farbenlicht-spielen/

dc174195.indd 198 10/10/06 12:53:07 PM


199

Digital C



music led him to become probably the first to write reconfigurable music for moving images (1925, p.83).

More successful as a delivery technol-ogy than the Reflected Colour Display was Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space-Modulator, built from 1922–1930, and presented at the Paris exhibition of the Industrial Association in 1930. It is a machine of approx. 120cm x 120cm, which consists of a constantly rotat-ing mechanism of screens and discs, some translucent, reflective or perforated, that move along different axes and at various speeds. Light is projected through this mechanism to illuminate a 360-degree space with a con-stantly-changing array of fleeting shapes and images, swirling or crawling, interpenetrating or chasing, vanishing or morphing. Moholy-Nagy hoped that the Light-Space-Modulator would

take account of man’s subconscious, emo-tional properties through which his eyes can be activated(Moholy-Nagy 1932, p.317)

andbuild a sensory bridge to our capacity for creating abstract concepts, which today can be approached only through extremely dif-ficult and obscure forms of thinking.(Moholy-Nagy 1932, p.316)

The Light-Space-Modulator, as well as the Reflected Colour Display, certainly provide

Figure 4. Still image of (multi-coloured) projection using the Reflected Colour Display, http://www.medi-enkunstnetz.de/works/farbenlicht-spielen/

Figure 5. László Moholy-Nagy, Light-Space-Modulatorhttp://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/lichtspiel/

Figure 6. Still image of the Light-Space-Modulator in operation, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/lichtspiel/

dc174195.indd 199 10/10/06 12:53:08 PM


Dig

ital C

reat

ivity

, Vol

. 17,

No.

4Prager

200

more than a visual experience; they activate the eyes in the sense that they heavily rely upon the embodied, distributed nature of our vision. Experiencing the project as an instal-lation effects a complete departure from the conventional human perceptual register, and viewers struggle to establish a sense of ki-nesthesia, perspective and spatial reference. It is precisely such an embodied experience that Mark Hansen, in his New philosophy for new media (2004), identifies as an important fea-ture of contemporary art. He argues that artists such as Jeffrey Shaw, Bill Viola, Douglas Gor-don or Robert Lazzarini, have embarked on a

…fundamental shift in aesthetic experience from a model dominated by the perception of a self-sufficient object to one focused on the intensities of embodied affectivity. To the extent that this shift involves a turning of sen-sation away from an ‘object’ and back onto its bodily source…what it ultimately yields is less a framed object than an embodied, subjective experience that can only be felt…In this way, the act of enframing information can be said to ‘give body’ to digital data—to transform something that is unframed, disembodied, and formless into concrete embodied information intrinsically imbued with (human) meaning.

(Hansen 2004, p.13)However, without an interface to connect

media and viewer, in his time, Moholy-Nagy could not employ the viewer to initiate crea-tive processes as such. For more concrete forms of interactivity, Moholy-Nagy and his colleagues looked towards the theatre.

3 ‘Total Theatre is the theatre of the future’

In Theatre of the Bauhaus (1925), Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer (in charge of the Bau-haus’ theatre workshop) and Bauhaus-student Farkas Molnár propose a new way of thinking about both the physical stage and dramaturgy. In its foreword, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, writes that

the spatial separation of the two different worlds, the auditorium and the stage…fails to draw the spectator physically into the or-bit of the play…The theatre is thereby robbed of one of its strongest means to make the spectator participate in the drama.(Gropius 1925, p.12)

In his criticism of the conventions of the proscenium-stage and the mimetic charac-ter of drama, Gropius begins from a similar point-of-departure to Brenda Laurel (1991) or Janet Murray (1997), who extol cyberspace as offering the possibility of a truly interactive performance-space.

The Bauhaus thinkers developed a range of plans for mechanical and dynamic theatres with reconfigurable levels and platforms. Molnár’s design for the U-Theatre (1925, p.71–78) conveys a desire not merely to transcend the separation between auditorium and stage, but also to be liberated from the confines of space, time and gravity—an ideal that would find its ultimate fulfillment only in cyberspace. However, Schlemmer and Moholy were successful in developing a new form of interactive, associational theatre. They aimed at the abolishment of drama’s literary mimetic aspects, so that

Figure 7. Design for a ‘Total Theatre’. U-Theatre, by Farkas Molnár. From Gropius (1925).

dc174195.indd 200 10/10/06 12:53:08 PM


201

Digital C



once the predominance [of the exclusively logical-intellectual values] has been broken, the associative processes and the language of man, and consequently man himself in his totality as a formative medium for the stage... is to be employed ON AN EQUAL FOOTING WITH THE OTHER FORMATIVE MEDIA.(Moholy-Nagy 1924, p.57, emphasis in original)

In the following description, Schlemmer pro-vides an impression of such a production:

We shall dress one…two…three actors in stylized padded tights and papier-mâché masks. The effect of the tights and masks together is to regroup the various and diffuse parts of the human body into a simple, uni-fied form ... If we now assign to each of these actors a different way of walking….and…let them measure out their space, so to speak, in time to a kettledrum, a snare drum, and wooden blocks, the result will be the ‘space dance’…If we put certain basic forms, such

as a ball, a club, a wand, and a pole, into their hands, and if we let their gestures and movements instinctively follow what these shapes convey to them, the result is what we can call ‘form dance’…If we now provide the masks with moustaches and glasses, the hands with gloves, the torsos with stylized dinner jackets, and if we add to their vari-ous ways of walking places to sit down ( a swivel chair, an armchair, a bench) and also various kinds of sounds (murmuring and hissing noises; double-talk and jabbering; an occasional bit of pandemonium ... the result is what we call ‘gesture dance’…Finally, we shall create for the players a universe of walls, props, and other stage equipment which can be easily transported and put up anywhere.(Schlemmer 1925, pp.97, 100)

Schlemmer’s theatre, especially if im-agined to take place in Molnár’s dynamic U-Theatre, bears a striking resemblance to current projects such as Bill Seaman’s The World Generator/Engine of Desire (1996–7). In a way similar to Schlemmer’s play with ab-stract media elements, Seaman invites ‘vusers’ to generate and recombine

music/sound, spatial text, juxtapositions of computer-graphic objects, images, digital movies, as well as attached behaviours, all functioning as relative fields of meaning force’ in an interactive virtual environment.(Seaman 1999, p.63)

But while Seaman’s ‘vusers’ engage in what he calls ‘recombinant poetics’ only through an interface of selections, Schlemmer’s stage-productions allow players to manipulate media elements in a much more immediate, embod-ied and spontaneous fashion.

Seaman is able to create a performance-space that Bauhaus thinkers could only imag-ine; but Schlemmer achieves what Seaman does not—incorporating the human body with all its senses into an exploration of media elements, expanding the dramatic environment into a collaborative arena, with multiple players, and

Figure 8. Meta or The Pantomime of Places, improvisation, Weimar, 1924.The various stages of a simple plot are freed from all accessories and paraphernalia; and the progression of the action is determined on the stage by means of placards such as: ‘Enter,’ ‘Exit,’ ‘Inter-mission,’ ‘Suspense,’ ‘1st, 2nd, 3rd Crisis’, ‘ Passion’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Climax’, etc.’(Schlemmer 1925, p.44)

dc174195.indd 201 10/10/06 12:53:09 PM


Dig

ital C

reat

ivity

, Vol

. 17,

No.

4Prager

202

facilitating an unobstructed liberation of the play instinct…the source of man’s real creative values, [which] is the un-self-con-scious and naïve pleasure in shaping and producing, without asking questions about use or uselessness, sense or nonsense, good or bad.(Schlemmer 1925, p.82)

New media researchers have recently begun to incorporate elements from traditional forms of theatre into the design of avatars and virtual environments. Ben Salem (2005), for example, has used rules and conventions from the Commedia dell’Arte and the Japanese Noh theatre to create a universally recognisable facial, gestural and behavioural choreogra-phy with which to facilitate social interaction among avatars in cyberspace. In contrast to Commedia dell’Arte or Noh, however, Schlemmer’s theatre is not easily reducible to a set of codes; it differs in the sense that there are no clear rules, character-types or dramatic structures. It is purely abstract—the masks are fantastic and ambiguous and the

‘plots’ consist of nothing more than the pure movement of forms, colour, and light.(Schlemmer 1925, p.88)

But perhaps the Bauhaus theatre can offer inspiration to current discussion, and practice, on integrating associational play within collab-orative virtual environments, computer games and interactive narrative. Artists and theorists such as Seaman (1999), Rieser (2002) and Thomas (2002; 2005) have certainly shown that associational narratives have the capac-ity to transform digital interactivity into a far more compelling and sensuous activity than many other narrative models.

4 ConclusionThe Bauhaus projects and theories presented in this article question the revolutionary para-digms often associated with the digital revolu-tion. Embodied cognition, technology and human desires for interactivity and immediacy

are shown to have developed in much more complex and accretive ways than contempo-rary notions of the computer-age, uninformed by history, might recognise.

When Moholy-Nagy observes that no one has been able to solve the problem of how to use man on stage successfully as a creative force

and thatto the new artists of the stage, we can make only general suggestions(Moholy-Nagy 1927, p. 300)

he is presenting a situation that was as cur-rent 80 years ago as it is now. As artists and theorists still struggle to develop truly interac-tive—rather than only participatory—narra-tives, a glance back to the days of the Bau-haus may provide inspiration, not merely for interaction design, as Ehn suggests, but for digital narrativity and virtual environments themselves.

The forthcoming interactive installation, PolyAlphabet (working title, Phillip Prager, 2007, Digital Studio, CU) takes seriously Moholy-Nagy’s suggestions, to create an interactive Polycinema, which will explore

Figure 9. Bill Seaman, The World Generator/Engine of Desire, 1996–7.http://digitalmedia.risd.edu/billseaman/workSpcWorld02.php

dc174195.indd 202 10/10/06 12:53:09 PM


203

Digital C



John Cage’s An Alphabet (1983 [1982])—a text consisting of 37 short scenes constructed of spoken words, originally organised accord-ing to chance operations. In PolyAlphabet, individual film spots will correspond to each textual scene, and viewers will be able to reconfigure an audiovisual version of Cage’s An Alphabet through associational play, fol-lowing literary, visual or aural themes and mo-tifs. This project will test the ideas advanced above, and enable a clearer identification of those features of Moholy-Nagy’s Polycinema that qualify it as a precursor to, and viable inspiration for, new kinds of contemporary recombinant and embodied, interactive cin-ematic experience.

References:Cage, J. (1983) X: writings, ‘79–‘82, Wesleyan UP,

Hanover, NH.

Ehn, P. (1998) ‘A manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus’, Digital Creativity, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 207–217.

Ehn, P. (2002) ‘Neither Bauhäusler nor nerd: edu-cating the interaction designer’, in Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems, ACM, London.

Gropius, W. (1925) ‘Introduction’ in Theatre of the Bauhaus, ed. W. Gropius; reprint, Wesleyan UP, Middletown, CT, 1961.

Hansen, M. (2004) New philosophy for new media, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Koffka, K. (1935) Principles of gestalt psychology, Harcourt, New York.

Köhler, W. (1922) ‘Perception: an introduction to the Gestalt-theory’, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 19, pp. 531–585.

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the flesh, Basic Books, New York.

Laurel, B. (1991) Computers as theatre, Addison Wesley, Boston.

Manovich, L. (2002) ‘Spatial computerisation and film language’ in New screen media cinema/art/narrative, eds M. Rieser and A. Zapp, British Film Institute, London, pp. 64–76.

Manuela (2005) directed by Phillip Prager, CUMIS Archive of Original Digital Moving Image Work (No. 487), Dept. of Architecture, University of Cambridge, UK, [digital video].

Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living, D. Reidel, Boston.

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1925) ‘Theatre, circus, vari-ety’ in Theatre of the Bauhaus, ed. W. Gropius, reprinted 1961, Wesleyan UP, Middletown.

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1925) Painting photography film; reprint, Lund Humphreys, London, 1967.

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1927) ‘Total Theatre is the thea-tre of the future’ in Moholy-Nagy, ed. K. Passuth, Thames and Hudson, London, 1985, pp. 209–311.

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1931) ‘Light display film’ in Mo-holy-Nagy, ed. K. Passuth, Thames and Hudson, London, 1985, pp.316–317.

Moholy-Nagy, L. (1932) ‘New film potentialities’ in Moholy-Nagy, ed. K. Passuth, Thames and Hudson, London, 1985, pp. 317–318.

Molnár, F. (1924) ‘U-Theater’ in Theater of the Bauhaus, ed. W. Gropius, reprinted 1961, Wesley-an UP, Middletown.

Murray, J. (1997) Hamlet on the holodeck, The Free Press, New York; reprint, MIT Press, Cambridge,

Figure 10. Schlemmer’s stage class. From Gropius (1925).

dc174195.indd 203 10/10/06 12:53:09 PM


Dig

ital C

reat

ivity

, Vol

. 17,

No.

4Prager

204

MA, 2000.

PolyAlphabet (forthcoming 2007) directed by Phillip Prager, Digital Studio, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, [interac-tive installation].

Rieser, M. (2002) ‘The poetics of interactivity: the uncertainty principle’ in New screen media cinema/art/narrative, eds M. Rieser and A. Zapp, British Film Institute, London, pp. 146–162.

Salem, B. (2005) ‘Commedia Virtuale: from theatre to avatars’, Digital Creativity, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 129–139.

Schlemmer, O. (1925) ‘Theatre (Bühne)’ in Theatre of the Bauhaus, ed. W. Gropius, reprinted 1961, Wesleyan UP, Middletown.

Seaman, B. (1999) ‘Recombinant poetics: emergent meaning and explored within a specific generative virtual environment’, PhD, Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA), [online], http://digitalmedia.risd.edu/billseaman/textsRe-comb.php, accessed 4 July 2006.

Thomas, M. (2002) ‘Vala’s Runecast: art/design/hypermovie’, in PDC 2002, Proceedings 7th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, eds T. Binder, J. Gregory and I. Wagner, CPSR, Palo Alto, pp. 366–372.

Thomas, M. (2005) ‘Playing with chance and choice - orality, narrativity and cinematic media’ in Developing interactive narrative content: sa-gas/sagasnet, ed. B. Bushoff, High Text, Munich, pp. 371–442.

Varela, F., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The embodied mind, MIT Press, Boston.

Wagner, R. (1895 [1849]) ‘The art-work of the future’, trans. A. Ellis, [online], http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagartfut.htm, accessed 18 July 2006.

Weinbren, G. (1995) ‘Mastery - computer games, intuitive interfaces and interactive media’, Leon-ardo, vol. 28, no.5, pp. 403–408.

Wertheimer, M. (1912) ‘Experimentelle Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung’, Zeitschrift für Psychologie, vol. 61, pp. 161–265.

Wertheimer, M. (1925) Drei Abhandlungen zur Gestalttheorie, Verlag der Philosophischen Akad-emie, Erlangen.

Phillip Prager graduated from Yale Univer-sity with a BA in History, and is currently a PhD student at the Digital Studio, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge. His main research focus is on visual media, media in transition and interactive, spatially-organ-ised narrativity.

dc174195.indd 204 10/10/06 12:53:10 PM


digital creativity back to the future: interactivity and associational narrativity at the bauhaus

Documents