Informatrix 3

An Interview with Edward Zajec

Is the (Informatrix) book a result of these investigations or a reason for them? Could you say that it is a kind of didactic aid for understanding your visual thinking or understanding the process of creating with a computer?

The book is the subject of my research and is not of a didactic nature. It is subtitled A Book of Visual Dialogues . The result of a dialogue is an actual experience gained by exchanging ideas and not just by understanding something through explanation.

A dialogue is not possible without two-way communication. All previous media from theatre to film, television and video are one-way communication media, that is, they dont allow for real time feedback, which is one of the basic attributes underlying the process of working with a computer.

Another fundamental attribute is that of control. I understand interaction as the process of delegating control to the machine on the one hand, and to the user on the other.

The meaning of this transaction is given by the quality of the experience gained by the user in the process of interaction. Being an artist in creating with a computer means knowing how to structure interaction in ways that are not banal. In ways, that is, that give the user the opportunity for creative involvement. And that was and still is the central goal of Informatrix.

Breda Skerjanec

' B. Skerjanec: An Interview with Edward Zajec ', from the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition: ' The Artist and the Computer: From the Beginnings to the Present ', at the International Centre of Graohic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2007