본 연구는 인터랙티브 미디어아트와 컴퓨터 게임의 특성을 살펴보고 비디오아트 작가 빌 비올라의 실험 게임 ‘The Night Journey’의 예술성과 게임으로서 갖는 의의에 대해 다루었다. 실험 게임 ‘The Night Journey’에 대한 게이머들의 반응은 대체로 긍정적이었지만, 한편으로 지루하고 게임의 흥미 요소를 만족시키지 못했기 때문에 게임으로 보기 어렵다는 반응도 적지 않았다. 또한 상업성이 부족하고 예술성을 강조하여 게임의 중요한 요소인 엔터테인먼트적 성격이 부족하다는 실험 게임의 한계점 또한 갖고 있다. 그러나 게임의 발전을 위해서는 예술 작품과의 비교와 함께 타 매체와의 융합 시도 등 다양한 실험이 필요함은 부정할 수 없다. 게임에 있어서는 상호작용성과 더불어 심미성이 필요하고, 인터랙티브 미디어아트 작품에는 게임 고유의 특성인 유희성과 몰입성을 가미하는 새로운 시도들이 이루어진다면, 두 매체의 성공적인 경계 확장과 발전에 큰 의의가 있으리라고 본다.

This research is focused on defining interaction within the context of digital media and creating a multi cultural definition of interactivity. The concept of multi digital culture and a definition of interaction in digital media have often been overlooked by other researchers and this has caused the emergence of many different notions on this issue. As a result of these varied notions of the concept, public confusion has arisen regarding interactivity. The main purpose of this research is to find a suitable multi definition of interaction through examining local digital culture. In order to analogise multi digital culture, the video game culture is employed as a metaphor to interpret local digital culture. The reason for this is that a specific national culture can be easily identified within the video game culture. Four countries, South Korea, Japan, the U.S. and the UK have been chosen for comparison purposes. Case study, questionnaire and publicly accessible video game related data, such as, video game charts, are used for formalising and analysing unique local digital culture. The Heyri POP UP IMAGE Festival, S. Korea, was also used as a pilot study, with some of the above research methods being employed to analyse South Korean digital culture. In relation to western cases, interview and questionnaire were primarily used. The data from the case countries was carefully compared and analysed and then it became the basis of a theory of multi definition of interaction in digital media. The case study employed the cultural metaphor for this research and in addition video game culture related questionnaires and interviews with experts of interactive art genre, regarding new notions of digital interaction were utilised. The survey was conducted simultaneously in the four different cultural case nations of this research. Twenty respondents from each case nation participated in the survey, in order to investigate firstly, the existence of 'local digital culture' and secondly, the trends and phenomena of 'digital culture' in these four different 'local digital cultural areas'. In terms of interviews with experts of the interactive art genre, these were focused on obtaining their understanding of contemporary digital culture in their research. Using gathered data from the observation of local digital culture, the basic theory of interaction and the terminology of interaction are reformed. Localised definitions of interaction on digital media, control based interaction and communication based interaction are presented, in order to identify a 'locality' in terms of various contemporary digital cultures. As a result of analysing digital culture, new definitions of 'multi definition of digital interaction' were formulated. As mentioned above, 'control' and 'communication' based interaction were initiated, based on 'user to media' relationships. Based on the degree of physical interaction, 'liminal' and 'transitive' interactions were initiated. Less physical digital interaction is named 'liminal' interaction and more physical digital interaction is named' transitive' interaction. These new definitions of interaction were applied to the real world examples of uses of digital interaction, such as, digital interactive installation artworks and video games. The newly defined meaning of digital interaction can be applied to analysing digital interactive installation artworks and possibly indicate their future development and the prospects of future electronic games. Three leading digital interactive artists were selected for this analysis and their works were studied in terms of the implementation of 'multi definition of digital interaction'. Throughout these processes, the meaning of 'communication' in digital interactive media was emphasised. Many of the selected artists' digital installations were focused on 'communication' or 'interaction between each user through digital media', rather than the concept of 'control' in digital interact..