Interpretive Strategies for Screen-Based Creative Technologies

This paper brings together the disciplines of media and creative technologies studies and software systems engineering; it focuses on the challenge of finding methodologies to measure, test and decode meaning in digital cultural objects. Just as rough set theory is a mathematical tool to deal with vagueness and uncertainty in artificial intelligence, and approximation accuracy and knowledge granularity are approaches to uncertainty research, the authors argue that découpage analytique is a possible method for decoding screen-based information. They draw on a variety of examples: interactive online digital art projects; an interactive, immersive screen-based art installation; re-mediated digital art installation; expanded cinema; a videogame; and a medical interface example, in order to determine if it is possible to map interpretive strategies that include a blending of old and new criteria, but ultimately promoting an equal partnership between artist and audience, and thus, a community of co-creators. Additionally, the authors present experimental evidence on the difference introduced by the screen size to further qualify the effectiveness of découpage analytique in relation to the amount of screen real estate afforded.