Interviewer: Right. Ceremony of Innocence is based on the trilogy of novels by Nick Bantock that follow the correspondence of a man and woman, Griffin and Sabine. The novels are themselves tactile interactions as the text is constructed as a number of postcards and letters that you actually take out of the pages of the book. The choice of those particular novels is ideal for an interactive media format. So, how did you come to that material?

Alex Mayhew: It wasn't actually my decision. I'd created these interactive postcards before at college. I was offered my job with Real World because of the postcards. The Griffin and Sabine books were introduced to David Stevens who is the CEO of Real World as a potential multimedia product. Peter Gabriel knew the books and really liked them.

So Real World has this guy, me, who's done these interactive postcards, and we have this book which is mainly about the exchange of postcards. Peter Gabriel supported the idea, but they had to go and pitch to Nick Bantock, to see if we could get the deal. They took my postcards along to show Nick as well.

Originally, I wasn't into doing it. The reasons being that designing interaction or designing functionality on something that has already been designed and designed not to be interactive and designed not to functional, as far as I can tell, is usually a big mistake. So for example, if you gave a piece of sculpture to a furniture maker and said, "Make this bit of sculpture," which is just designed to be looked at and nothing else, "And make it into a comfortable chair. Still keep the dignity of the original thing." Or the spirit of the original thing. It's actually very difficult to do because you might end up with a product where interaction is just bolted on top. It'sand afterthought. It doesn't really mean anything. It's just there for it to be interactive and it actually distracts from the original intention of the work. A good interactive design is when you weave the interaction into the story or into the concept right at the very beginning, rather than having the concept and then getting the interactivity afterwards.

There were two reasons that I changed my mind about using the Griffin and Sabine books to make Ceremony. Nick was being open about changing bits in order to make more of the interactive potential. That seemed like a kind of a good compromise to me. But also, a lot of the images I looked at and I felt, "God, I can see these things being interactive already." It stank of interactive potential. You could see little parrots flying around--so much potential for interaction. But I guess Griffin Sabine was an exception.

Interviewer: I am unsure because of the more drastic metaphor you used of turning a representational artifact, a sculpture, and turn it into a utility, a chair; whether you also consider the treatment of novels into films as being unjustified as well?

Alex Mayhew: I think so, but even more so. There's a much bigger divide between a book and a film than there is between a book and an interactive version of the book. Basically, one is functional and has to be functional for a reason, and one isn't. But with a film and a book, they are both non-functional, in the sense that you don't interact. They're still relatively passive.

Whenever I give demos of my stuff, whether it's 'Ceremony' or any other stuff, there's usually two responses. There's one response when people watch the thing. Another response when people watch and interact with the thing. Usually, I want everyone interacting as much as possible to get the full sense of what they're looking at or what they're experience. Just like, again, with the furniture metaphor. You don't just look at a chair. You actually sit on it as well to see how comfortable it is.

Interviewer: Let us talk about the production process. It's an ambitious multimedia project relative to the field of literary products having been published in the world of interactive media. How long did it take to make?

Alex Mayhew: I can't remember. I was a big haze. I don't know. I think two and a half years.

Interviewer: Two and half years?

Alex Mayhew: Yes. But a lot of that wasted. Not entirely wasted, because it was new in its genre, there was a lot of learning to be done. Like most complex projects it had its ups and downs. The most important thing at Real World is that a product is artistically sound and it is a positive for society. But obviously they also won't touch anything unless they think it has potential to make money. There's quite a nice balance there. Not many companies have that balance. Most companies usually just think about the money. But Real World's first is to make something which is art--whether it's music, festivals or interactive projects.

I think the success of the project also hinged on the love-hate relationship between myself and the producter Gerrie Villon. We made quite a good team. It's good that I had him as a producer. Because he was always trying to draw lines around me and put things into boxes, which is I guess what good producers do. But I was always trying to say, "Look, this doesn't belong in the box." There's still holes in the wall from when I've punched the wall after meetings with my producer.

Interviewer: Well, that's good.