Choice and Shape or the Shape of Choice

Margaret Thomas Kelso

Peter Weyhrauch

Joseph Bates

“Dramatic Presence” in
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments January 1993

Finally, we wanted to know if the interactor could be guided without feeling manipulated. We believe that providing a satisfying experience for an interactor relies on maintaining a delicate balance between freedom and control. At one extreme, the interactor enters a fictional world and just experiences it — the interactor meets and talks with characters, explores the physical space, examines and plays with objects, and leaves when ready. At the other extreme, the interactor is pushed through a tight story containing little leeway and few choices. We aim to find a path in the middle: allowing the interactor maximum freedom of choice and response while still presenting a shaped experience.

Hermeneutics would have us understand that the shaped experience is not only in authorial hands. And we are also reminded that the interaction (reader) is a conduit for intertextual relations between worlds — freedom bred of comparison.

And so for day 2908
28.11.2014

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