interaction, part 1: goodbye.

i may be writing a bit about interaction in the next few weeks. primarily because the project i'm working on sits pretty firmly in the 'interactive' camp of arts practice. but also because i've been reading a bit about the philosophical aspects of interaction have been thinking about the dynamics of human interaction - listening, conversation and relationships.

counterintuitively, one of the first things i'm interested in unpacking a bit about is the interaction of 'goodbye'. i recently wanted to say a formal 'goodbye' to a stack of peeps in perth after spending much time in their tribe. sadly, and for a stack of reasons, not many people were able to make it, and i left wondering about the ritual of saying goodbye.

even though 'goodbye' is the end of an interaction between characters, it is also the beginning of a new interaction. it has its own set of variables and etiquette, rarely discussed in white, australian culture. the country of the laid back 'g'day' are also not so formal with their goodbyes. 'see ya'.

perhaps because i move around a lot, or because i've spent time in cultures for which the goodbye is given (linguistically and culturally) more weight, i'm finding that casual-ness a bit unsatisfying.

in schlock pseudo-psycho terms, there is no closure.

it's a metaphysical sentence that has no full stop. and when there's no punctuation, there ceases to be meaning. there also ceases to be intent. and therefore no beginning of the next interaction - the one of 'still friends, but separated by distance' or something.


in coding/system term, there's no } - no end to the instruction, which creates errors, which means you don't have an interaction. in not saying 'goodbye', one nulls and voids the interaction at all.


ok, so that's abstracting it and perhaps creating an analogy that simplifies things too much - human interactions are far more complex than a missing }, / or . but i do wonder if we lack consideration of the deeper sides to human interaction protocol (HIP) in the same way as we now do our other forms of interaction.