Living in the 1960’s and already writing a thesis about technological art that the audience can play and interact with, Roy Ascott was impressively ahead of his time. Throughout the essay I appreciated his enthusiasm for interactive art. Ascott sounded very passionate about his ideas and beliefs. Yet, I feel that he elaborates far too much when the points he makes are simple enough to grasp, yet he feels the need to explain it for so long. If he felt that his reader might have been confused in any way about his new concepts then he should have saved his lengthy and wordy explanations and wrote in an understandable style of speaking. Also, I felt that he could’ve toned down on his repetitiveness. How many times does Roy Ascott have to mention the fact that interactive art responds to an audience’s behavior? However, I must accept that this idea was new and radical during those times. Now I wonder if it was just me who thought this way after reading this paper, but that’s how I felt. What I liked about Ascott’s thesis though was at the end when he mentioned the future projects companies were already working on. It was refreshing to read the beginning stages of this new idea by already having it be put to the test. Even though most of the time I was confused by what these inventions actually did.
