The Work

Practicing the Interface

Piotr Syzhalski's The Final Analysis is an object lesson in presenting an interface to get beyond the interface. What is on the surface a random, almost chaotic experience of multiplying visual and auditory stimuli, is a carefully scripted experience designed to "discover the truth through practice."

<TITLE>THEORY</TITLE>
To enter The Final Analysis, it as if the user enters through a portal with the inscription: "Discover the Truth Through Practice and Again Through Practice Verify & Develop the Truth." Both clear and enigmatic, the visitor is unlikely to ponder its meaning too long. If the ticking clock isn't enough to push you through, the siren invitation of a standard button that reads "Begin Your Practice"--no artistic ambiguity here--is almost irresistible. And if it isn't, a refresh tag automatically dumps you into another screen (<TITLE>RETURN</TITLE>). Little is left to chance.

<TITLE>DISCOVER</TITLE>
We begin. Syzhalski opens a new window where he has taken away all the usual browser navigation buttons. We are in his world now. A countdown like the beginning of a film runs from 5 to "Start." A loud heartbeat overlays the ticking clock. What will we discover? We click.

<TITLE>PRACTICE</TITLE>
Not much. An ugly green background. Then a familiar voice comes on. "At that hour, in this office." Richard Nixon. But there is nothing to do but click. As we do, the section of the screen you click in halves each time. The background color becomes lighter in the active frame. A new audio clip is layered onto the soundtrack ("the subtlety is lost" (Bill Clinton?), "the concrete and mortar, the guard posts, the machine gun posts, the dog runs, and the barbed wire (Ronald Reagan), "the confrontations,"), building to an enervating cacophony of voices, some of which you recognize and some not. It doesn't matter. Eventually, the screen subdivides to a rectangle that is 1/32nd of the full screen and a word appears in that rectangle. Relief. A message. Click on the word and a black bar strikes through it. Click on it again. Shit!

<TITLE>START AGAIN</TITLE>
A screen with the word "practice" written out as if in a penmanship book appears. Start over! It took me forever to get to this point on my modem connection.... True, there is some relief in the silence of the absent sound track. Somehow, the "Practice" experience was compelling enough and the desire to figure out the hidden message makes you start over again anyway. Click. (And if you wait too long thinking about it, you are dumped to the next screen regardless. Choice is a relative concept. in Szyhalski's world.)

<TITLE>VERIFY</TITLE>
That blank, black screen again. That damn heartbeat. Click.

<TITLE>DEVELOP</TITLE>
The same pea green screen. You click down through the rectangles again. Notice that the audio comes up in a different order this time. It's a different "chorus." The sound must be triggered by specific segments of the screen. (Although Tricky Dicky always has the first words.) There's a baby crying this time. And some singing. Eventually, you get down to a 1/32nd box and a word appears. Don't click! Carefully, you subdivide the entire screen, trying to decode the message. Shit! Not again. In waiting for the screen to redraw you accidentally click twice on a word. You brace yourself to start over. But no, a picture fragment appears. What's this? Why didn't it throw me back to the beginning? Maybe because it's a different quadrant this time. Gingerly, you click again. The picture doubles. Click. Redoubles, each time combinging itself into a larger version with more of some "whole" picture visible.

<TITLE>WITHIN</TITLE>
Quickly, a chalk drawing of a man and woman standing in an interior space with bed, desk, window and picture on the wall of the view out the window. What does it mean? What was that message? Reluctantly, you click again.

<TITLE>VERIFY</TITLE>
Black screen. The familiar heartbeat. Click.

<TITLE>DEVELOP</TITLE>
This time you know the drill. You go methodically, from left to right, top to bottom, revealing the text, without going too far. It reads, in part 

practice, knowledge, again practice, 
and again knowledge. this 
form repeats itself in
The message is finally revealed. Aha. (You didn't think I would really reveal the whole message, did you? You wouldn't appreciate it without practice, anyway.)

<TITLE>WITHIN</TITLE>
As you continue clicking, the image reconstitutes itself from the 1/32-screen fragments of text, de-constructing language, building a world view.

--Steve Dietz



 


This is an excellent example of net.art. 1) It works. 2) It plays off the uncertainty of the net. You never really know where you are, or where you're going. 3) The accumulation of sensory data begins to present itself in a way that creates a sense of place...you are in this artist's construct, and an aesthetically interesting one as well.
--rc


I am engaged by Piotr's work the way that he draws the participant into his world, the way that the nature of the web becomes integrated into the nature of the work. His sense of design emanates from the work, and his sense of interaction requires the web as its conduit.
--ch


one of the aspects of Szyhalski's work that interests me the most is the way he plays with interactivity. There is apparent interactivity--things happen when you click, for example--but ultimately he undermines the conflation of clicking with choice. As an artist, he is not interested in letting you "create" the ending, although he likes to give you enough rope to hang yourself
--sd


The work treads a very difficult line between clarity and obscurity in its interface and provides an interesting unfolding of information that avoids a typical narrative story. Certainly, the piece remediates many aesthetic sensibilities of previous media, such as the layering of sounds to the point of chaos, but there is also this fantastically clever use of the "net-frame"... It manages to discuss fracturization while really staying conceptually focused in a medium that seems to facilitate conceptual fracture.
--pv