Windows and Mirrors: TEXT RAIN as a medium rather than a machine

This weeks reading of the first three chapters of Bolters and Diane: Windows and Mirrors was surprisingly interesting and easy to comprehend. For the purpose of this blog post I am going to focus my reflection on chapter 1, specifically TEXT RAIN, and how it relates to the information given in the chapter.  I believe that the use of TEXT RAIN as the first exhibit to explore and to introduce the concepts of this chapter was perfectly fitting.  I started off the reading by visualizing what I believe was a beautiful piece of art on multiple levels.  This is something that we see often in 2014: computers being an extremely popular medium for creativity and art these days, but I had never thought about how we got here.  Chapter 1 speaks about three main points; "1) The computer has become a new medium (a new set of media forms) 2) To design a digital artifact is to design an experience 3) Digital design should not try to be invisible (chapter 1, pg12)."  The Text Rain exhibit clearly shows all three of these points while the chapter continues to explain how these concepts came about.  Dates are given along with the way the computer was viewed at the time as well as the development of perception of the computer going from a “machine” to a “symbol manipulator” and everything in between as is evolved into the medium that it is today. Text Rain was just the beginning of the computers use of a medium. It allowed for creativity and expression from both the creators and the “viewers” or “participants”, created an interactive experience, allowed for the relay of a message both by the user itself and the concept as a whole, and definitely was not invisible on any level.