The History of the Interface in Interactive Art

At the moment the catch word "interactivity" is common talk. Most often it is mentioned in connection with a revolution in television. Techno-prophets anticipate more than 200 TV channels for the near future in each home. Thus, viewers will not only be able to choose from an almost unlimited offer, they will also be able to determine the course and outcome of individual programs. 

Proponents of these new opportunities are already praising interactivity as a means to change the passive reception of the viewer into an active one. Thus, it seems as if Bertolt Brecht's Radio Theory [3], which he developed in the late twenties, is now to become reality. Brecht envisioned the transformation of broadcasting from a distribution machine into a communication device that offers listeners the opportunity to help create its content. 

And actually this development has been actively persued for years by groups such as the Ponton Media Art Lab, by persons such as Myron Krueger, and by the communication structure of the internet.

Rhetorical reason

Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, "The faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion", presupposes a distinction between an art (τέχνη, techné) of speech–making and a cognitively prior faculty of discovery. That is so because, before one argues a case, one must discover what is at issue.

How, for example, does one discover available means of persuasion? One does not simply frolic through fertile fields of τόποι (topoi), randomly gathering materials with which to build lines of argument. There is a method endemic to rhetoric which guides the search for those lines of argument that speak most directly to the issue at stake.

Cassin's Finch

Cassin's Finch (Carpodacus cassinii) is a bird in the finch family Fringillidae. This species and the other "American rosefinches" are usually placed in the rosefinch genus Carpodacus, but they likely belong in a distinct genus Burrica.

Adults have a short forked brown tail and brown wings. They have a longer bill than the Purple Finch. Adult males are raspberry red on the head, breast, back and rump; their back and undertail are streaked. Adult females have light brown upperparts and light underparts with brown streaks throughout; their facial markings are less distinct than those of the female Purple Finch. Their breeding habitat is coniferous forest in mountains of western North America as far south as northern New Mexico and Arizona; also Southern California near Baja California. They nest in a large conifer.

They move to lower elevations in winter. Birds from Canada migrate south; other birds are permanent residents; non-breeding resident birds winter as far south as central interior Mexico, the Mexican Plateau. Besides the 'breeding-residency' locale of southwest Canada, two disjunct breeding areas occur: the coastal mountains of extreme northern California and the Black Hills of South Dakota. These birds forage in trees, sometimes in ground vegetation.

They mainly eat seeds, buds and berries, some insects. When not nesting, they often feed in small flocks. This bird was named after John Cassin, who was a curator at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.