There has been a great deal of discussion recently as to the artistic merits of interactive work. Often times the technological aspects overshadow the aesthetic and artistic concerns; in the end the conceptual ideas are laid atop it like ill-fitting p ieces of felt cloth. The inverse of this is can also occur when a work is perceived as little more than weak science.

At this point the collective vocabulary is so limited that at times it is nearly impossible to pin point where the value lies within a work. An interesting interaction alone can seem like reason enough for art, but where does the 'art' go when that i nteraction becomes co-opted by industry. This issue is different from the process with which 'high art' becomes the stuff of greeting cards and T-shirts. In this case it is not the aesthetic which is valued (or de-valued), it is the technology.

In his article, "It is Interactive - but is it Art?", Erkki Huhtamo describes a problem with many interactive art works which can be read as, "naive celebrations of technology. In such works the value of interactive technology is taken for granted, a s creative and marvelous, and enough to justify the label of art". It is important to remember that this is how the dialogue is played out from the perspective of the art world. Unlike many other artistic practices, machine or computer based work has one foot in an entirely different field from the very beginning. A similar discourse is played out from the perspective of the technological community. A simple inversion of this idea generally sounds like, "it's art, but is it technologically valuable?". I t is a dangerous place to be. The computer scientists might say, "Johnny isn't much of a programmer, but what an artist!". And the artists may say, "Johnny's work is lacking, but what a computer whiz!".

This type of criticism occurs in any interdisciplinary practice, but seems to be compounded in the art-science debate because there are two competing ideologies at work. The logically based sciences must regard art as not merle functionless but, wrong ...and possibly dangerous. Huhtamo goes on to describe the way in which the technical community regards the artwork of the SIGGRAPH art show as, "...a kind of pastime, which is, however, close enough to the hard-core research to enjoy a certain respectabi lity...". So we return to the question, 'Where is the value?'.

This question is of personal concern to me in regards to my Robotic Piano piece aka: "Trying to Reason with a Child". The work involves an upright Wurlizter piano that has been 'robotically enhanced' so as to be an interactive player-piano; a piano t hat can learn to play by being played. At the time of this writing, it has created no great works of music; the visual aesthetic is based more in practicality than anything else; as a work of robotics or computer science, it is of no ground breaking impo rtance; and the situation is complicated by the fact that there exist commercially available player pianos that, while not interactive, skirt uncomfortably close to this territory. And yet, I still find it a valuable work. Why? Does the mere fact of standing between fields give the work intrinsic value? Or, can the value of a work be found solely in the aesthetics of the interaction, the rest serving as contextual data more than as a basis of the art?

The aesthetics of the interaction in this case embody several ideas. In one, the player is communicating with a virtual body via the keyboard. This interaction could be compared to any one of the many computer programs that attempt to fulfill the re quirements of the Turning Test via a computer keyboard, only in this case, a piano keyboard. Due to the computational limitations of the available hardware as well as the mechanical imperfections of the system, a child like behavior seemed to emerge, hen ce the title.

A second characteristic of the interaction is grounded in the physicality of the piano keyboard and the familiar conventions of interaction with a piano. I do not play the piano myself, but like many people, I grew up around one. As complex as a piano is, it is not intimidating to to most people. Although I cannot play a song, the expected sound of hitting a key is not terribly far from the actual one. I contrast this with the expected sound of an oboe versus the feline-death-throng that I might emit from it given the opportunity. The piano is nearly as much a piece of furniture as it is a musical instrument. For this reason, there need not be any further instructions than "Please touch the keys". The interaction teaches itself. This l eads us to the third aspect of the piano interaction.

The value of an interaction that can explain or adapt itself without the need of an instruction manual is more than worthy of its own category. The need for this is paramount to interactive art expanding beyond the realm of video game or push button style interfaces. The paradigms of interactivity that have been integrated into the public psyche are so dangerously limited that unless they are expanded in an intuitive manner, interactive art is at risk of becoming subservient to the entertainment ind ustry, constantly having to borrow its modes of interaction from those that already exist.

Having said this, it has become clear to me that the 'art' is in the interaction. It exists within this characteristic of the work that makes it unique from other art forms. Furthermore, the values and vocabulary that are used to describe and critiqu e the works are wholly different from other forms. To make matters more complicated, the aesthetics of the interaction itself is only the beginning. The relationship of the interactivity to the traditional aspects of the work (form, representation, concept, etc.) is also unique to interactivity and is in need of its own vocabulary as well. In the future a public discourse on interactive art may have a rich tradition and vocabulary to pull from, however, in the mean time it is the job of the interactive artists to create works which necessitate its devel opment.