Brad Paley: "Interaction Design as a Branch of the Humanities: A Healthier Fit than Technology or Computer Science?"

On Wednesday Tricia and I attended the Digital Dialogue featuring Brad Paley and it was very interesting. He presented only one work concerning the humanities, but the point of the lecture was to create thought and discussion about whether or not Human Computer interaction research is a good fit in the arts or not.
The example he presented was the TextArc of Alice in Wonderland. At first it seems like a simple picture but on the computer it becomes an interesting work of electronic literature. As he writes on the web page, www.textarc.org, "TextArc is a tool designed to help people discover patterns and concepts in any text by leveraging a powerful, underused resource: human visual processing." The words which occur more frequently are brighter and layered on top of the others. The viewer/user understands that these are the more important words, like Alice and Queen, and we can see exactly where they occur in the text. He showed that Queen is displaced in three distinct places; by putting the mouse over "Queen" strings spread from that word to where they are mentioned in the text (the outermost arc is the entire text from beginning to end). She is introduced and then not mentioned again until the reader would have forgotten about her. Such a tool as TextArc gives one an easy way to analyze the structure an author has chosen.
This is an interesting concept and program, which allows for many new ways for analysing and creating new ideas about a text and it's author, but I do not feel that it is a great piece of electronic literature. Once the idea and program were made, it becomes the same thing over and over again, just with different texts.

The other things he presented were examples of Human Computer Interactions. Such as keypads for doctors and stock brokers. These have very little to do with the humanities but the concepts behind them would help make electronic literature better. I understand the concept to be using common cultural thought processes to make electronic devices easier to use. Brad studies the thought process of brokers - how they make a stock deal, the steps involved, the most important ideas and distinctions - and creates the best pda possible for them.
Often, electronic literature is difficult for the user. Like myself, many people interested in literature are not "computer-savvy." If artists had a better idea of the way the average reader worked through a text, their work would become easier. But, as I write this I wonder if the difficulty is part of the point. I have no experience with Second Life and I think learning a new skill is part of the experience. Works on the ELC are interactive like nothing I've ever come across and I feel that working through a new medium and finding meaning in the interaction is part of the beauty.
So then Brad Paley's work in HCIL could be useful for artists in the humanities but might be too involved for an artist to use. A collaboration between the fields would be far more effective. If an artist could present her work to a member of HCIL they could work together to make it a more effective work.
Overall, this was a very interesting presentation that brought to light many possibilities in this new mixture of the computer and literature.