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Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the 21st Century
THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT
"The audience for everything has grown in size, and the number of experiences to watch has grown even more rapidly. These two factors mean that the nature of the audience must change. When that occurs, our current standards of excellence need to be rethought and redefined. New standards our grandparents could not have imagined need to be developed. . . ."
--from Interactive Excellence
INTERACTIVE EXCELLENCE
Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century
"Gertrude Stein said that 'great art is irritation.' Mosquitoes irritate us, as do certain sounds and images. But does that make fingernails dragging across a blackboard art? Hardly. If something awakens us, moves us, transforms us, makes us feel and think in a new way, makes itself a part of us, that is a measure of greatness. Great art is what challenges us to see ourselves and each other more clearly. Great art makes us understand our relationship to the world we are in. Sometimes to change how we think we must look from a new perspective. Irritation makes us move away from our comfortable way of looking--and our comfortable way of creating art. A movie like The Graduate or a book like The Grapes of Wrath stimulates us--irritates us, in a way--to become part of a conversation, with others and within ourselves, about who, how, why, where, and when we are. . . ."
"The audience for everything has grown in size, and the number of experiences to watch has grown even more rapidly. These two factors mean that the nature of the audience must change. When that occurs, our current standards of excellence need to be rethought and redefined. New standards our grandparents could not have imagined need to be developed. . . ."
--from Interactive Excellence
INTERACTIVE EXCELLENCE
Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century
"Gertrude Stein said that 'great art is irritation.' Mosquitoes irritate us, as do certain sounds and images. But does that make fingernails dragging across a blackboard art? Hardly. If something awakens us, moves us, transforms us, makes us feel and think in a new way, makes itself a part of us, that is a measure of greatness. Great art is what challenges us to see ourselves and each other more clearly. Great art makes us understand our relationship to the world we are in. Sometimes to change how we think we must look from a new perspective. Irritation makes us move away from our comfortable way of looking--and our comfortable way of creating art. A movie like The Graduate or a book like The Grapes of Wrath stimulates us--irritates us, in a way--to become part of a conversation, with others and within ourselves, about who, how, why, where, and when we are. . . ."
112 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 1998
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 17, 2013
This is a pretty disappointing book, even taking into account that I'm reading a book wrestling with cutting-edge issues of the time published in 1998.
It reads like a not-very-good TED talk: lots of breezy generalizations, intriguing factoids, inspiring exhortations, and a few actual instances from the author's experience as a museum planner (the best parts, not incidentally).
A book, however, about excellence ought to define "excellence," and this one doesn't. Schlossberg seems unable to choose between excellence as "really good, whatever it is" or as "going beyond the norm, the average."
There have been cultural moments, yes, when appeal up and down the classes could coincide with artistic excellence. Schlossberg himself adduces Shakespeare. The jazz greats of the 1940s and 1950s also had wide popular appeal while performing works of enduring artistic merit. Some argue that television drama and comedy today is the best it has ever been. But why have these situations obtained? Are they instructive, or just wondrous? Ought we to emulate them, or just hope that pop culture can be a good version of itself while high culture goes its own, innovative, and challenging way? Schlossberg can't seem to get this question into focus, and so never faces it squarely but rather equivocates whenever "excellence" is mentioned.
One has to decide what "excellence" means in order to promote it, and, alas, Schlossberg's little book seems like nothing so much as an extended infomercial for interactive museums--which, yes, is his primary business. And a subtitle that promises help in "defining and development new standards" ought to actually begin to . . . define and develop standards, rather than just hope they will somehow emerge as more people try to educate more other people and in that interaction new standards of excellence will emerge. (I know this sounds like I'm maliciously oversimplifying, but I honestly don't think the book's message gets much beyond this level of vapidity.)
It reads like a not-very-good TED talk: lots of breezy generalizations, intriguing factoids, inspiring exhortations, and a few actual instances from the author's experience as a museum planner (the best parts, not incidentally).
A book, however, about excellence ought to define "excellence," and this one doesn't. Schlossberg seems unable to choose between excellence as "really good, whatever it is" or as "going beyond the norm, the average."
There have been cultural moments, yes, when appeal up and down the classes could coincide with artistic excellence. Schlossberg himself adduces Shakespeare. The jazz greats of the 1940s and 1950s also had wide popular appeal while performing works of enduring artistic merit. Some argue that television drama and comedy today is the best it has ever been. But why have these situations obtained? Are they instructive, or just wondrous? Ought we to emulate them, or just hope that pop culture can be a good version of itself while high culture goes its own, innovative, and challenging way? Schlossberg can't seem to get this question into focus, and so never faces it squarely but rather equivocates whenever "excellence" is mentioned.
One has to decide what "excellence" means in order to promote it, and, alas, Schlossberg's little book seems like nothing so much as an extended infomercial for interactive museums--which, yes, is his primary business. And a subtitle that promises help in "defining and development new standards" ought to actually begin to . . . define and develop standards, rather than just hope they will somehow emerge as more people try to educate more other people and in that interaction new standards of excellence will emerge. (I know this sounds like I'm maliciously oversimplifying, but I honestly don't think the book's message gets much beyond this level of vapidity.)
May 22, 2012
A great book on the quality of various modes of interaction... It inspired me to create my multi - user (v)user media installations...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews