Biography

Lasse Scherffig studied cognitive science at the university of Osnabrück, Germany, and SUNY Oswego, USA (B.Sc., 2002); graduate studies in digital media at the University of Bremen, Germany, and Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland (M.Sc., 2005). He has been a visiting researcher at the Institute for Basic Research of the ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2004-2005), and at the Cybermedia Research Unit of the Knowledge Media Research Center, Tübingen, Germany (April 2007). He is among the founders of off topic, magazine for media art. Since October 2006 he is a doctoral candidate in the field of experimental computer science.

 

Since July 2006 he is a member of the artistic/scientific staff of the KHM, working at Lab3 and concentrating on experimental computer science and theory and praxis of human-computer interaction.

 

Dissertation project

Feedback Machines

In 1977, Mattel releases the first portable computer game: Football. Players control the game using six push-buttons while its display is limited to a small number of LEDs only. Due to this extreme minimalism of representation, the question arises: How is the dynamics of the game represented at all? At least this representation is not iconic in terms of semiotics, as what is shown here (a football game) bears little or no similarity to the form in which it is shown (by a small number of LEDs). In addition, we may not assume that in 1977 a cultural convention has already been established regulating the symbolism of presenting game events on such a minimalist display. Playing Football instead might be a process that is mediated on two levels: One is the games’ context, comprising its name “Football,” its handbook and the design of the portable device. The other is the technological coupling of game and player. Based on this coupling, the game is not primarily experienced by seeing it, but by playing it.

 

Computer science has termed such couplings of humans and computers “interaction.” The questions, how interaction functions, how it developed historically and what it is exactly, have been treated from various points of view and with varying foci. The dissertation project aims at providing an integrated view on interaction, trying to explain the low-level psychology of interaction as a psychology of perception in action, the historic emergence of interactive computers from cybernetics, its precursors and early computer science and, based on both, the cultural technique of interacting with computers. Central to the approach will be the notions of feedback and circular causality.