Dramatic Foundations - Computers as Theatre - page 76

The action must not be so long that one forgets the beginning before one
gets to the end, since one must be able to perceive it as a whole in order to
fully enjoy it. This criterion is most immediately observable in computer
games, which can often require a person to be hunched over a keyboard
for days on end if he or she is to perceive the whole at one sitting, a feat of
which only teenagers are capable. In good massively multiplayer games,
design can assist the player in fi nding good intermediate “stopping places”
where catharsis is possible, even though the potential of the game is not ex-
hausted and the player intends to return to it. Similar errors in magnitude
are likely to occur in other forms, such as virtual reality systems, in which
the raw capabilities of a system to deliver material of seemingly infi nite du-
ration is not yet tempered by a sensitivity to the limits of human memory
and attention span, or to the relationship of beauty and pleasure to dura-
tion in time-based arts.
Problems in magnitude can also plague other, more “practical,” ap-
plications as well. If achievable actions with distinct beginnings and ends
cannot occur within the limits of memory or attention, then the activity be-
comes an endless chore. Contrariwise, if the granularity of actions is too
small, and those actions cannot be grouped into more meaningful, coherent
units, the shape of the activity is either a forgettable point or an endless line
of chores. These problems are related to the shape of the action as well as its
magnitude, the fi rst subject to be treated in the next chapter.
The notion of beauty that drives Aristotle's criterion of magnitude is the
idea that made things, like plays, can be organic wholes—that the beauty of
their form and structure can approach that of natural organisms in the way
the parts fi t perfectly together. In this context, he expresses the criterion for
inclusion of any given incident in the plot or whole action:
. . . an imitation of an action must represent one action, a complete
whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal
or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.
For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or ab-
sence is no real part of the whole ( Poetics 1451a, 30-35).
If one aims to design human-computer activities that are—dare we
say— beautiful , this criterion must be used in deciding, for instance, what
a person should be able to do, or what a computer-based agent should be
represented as doing, in the course of the action. It also implies that leaving
things out can be important in achieving a graceful organic whole.