I share an abiding interest in the tactics that Happenings and Conceptual artists used to involve their audience directly in the creation of art. But many of these historical figures learned the same lesson I did when I invited people off the street to participate with complete freedom in the making of my work. Even John Cage, the American composer whose revolutionary approach to the politics of artist and audience inspired the invention of Happenings and Fluxus (and whose influence on the evolution of new media is drastically underestimated), realized that imposing a structure of some kind is essential to breaking people out of their established habits.

In a more recent example, I have had the fortune of experiencing first-hand Paul Sermon's _Telematic Vision_, a networked chroma-key installation in which two visitors appear on a video screen sitting on the same couch despite the fact that they are each sitting alone on different couches. Sermon*s installation has the virtue of demonstrating to the public a clear example of a shared virtual space. But when I sat on the couch or observed others doing so, I found that the participants* behavior quickly devolved into cutsey pantomimes, virtual embraces, and other antics familiar from our experience with fun-house mirrors. While the fact that people have fun with a piece does not by itself disqualify it from inspiring insight, the work had a much less lasting impression on my bodily perception of virtual space than, say, a Bruce Nauman video corridor. Is it a coincidence that Nauman seems fairly clear about the disorientation he wishes to impose on his viewer, and he (quite literally) channels the viewer in that direction?

One of the reasons I love e-mail is that it is about as reciprocal a medium as you can get – yet I am not surprised when individual messages sent in that medium attempt to exert some control over their readers* opinions.

Whether we're talking about artworks or e-mail messages, I think we should strive not for the maximum diversity of each individual but for the maximum diversity of the network as a whole. And sometimes this is better accomplished by allowing some of those individuals to take strong, adversarial positions rather than asking every individual to accommodate every possible point of view.

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– Jon Ippolito