Mark Petrakis: I am a producer, writer, director. I work with companies to figure out their show, whether it is a media product, live events or other kinds of project.

Interviewer: Why did you move to digital technologies?

Mark Petrakis: It was a search for intelligence, like Jodie Foster in "Contact". It was about personal empowerment. In between my group experiences (that is acting in one show or another), I did not have a connection, a role. Here comes a thing that says you can talk to me, you can email me, you can conference online, with smart people from all over.

Interactivity, hypercard, hit me like a ton of bricks. Early VR, 1989, going up to Autodesk and putting on my first VR helmet, I mean, come on, that was exciting. Virtual worlds, I intuited what that was about, I could build great virtual worlds, but it's not really cost effective.

Interviewer: Why for you are imaginary worlds important?

Mark Petrakis: I have this vision of a world that is pretty groovy, the technology makes this possible. But I have to ask myself, is it worth it. You persist because you have something to communicate. If you don't have something to communicate, none of this makes any sense, it's just the latest fashion from Paris, its cool this month, but it won't be cool next month.

Ultimately cyberspace is as close to we have come to manifesting our own personal imaginations, or our collective imaginations, and we will inhabit these worlds.

What I do is like a dramaturg in theater, perhaps a mediaturg. Instead of just having the language of the theater to choose from, we have the languages of all these media to choose from. But basically, you are at service to the play, to the message. You have to get that clear, whether it's business or art. If you don't know what the message is, then ten thousand pounds of computer gear, 9 gigabytes of drive space, will not help. It will only muddy the issue. You have to get back to the truth, the meaning.

Interviewer: On interactivity, how do we deal with interactive creation when we are wired to prefer our meaning in linear packages?

Mark Petrakis: Some forms of mediated communication demand traditional audience behavior. Some are someplace in the middle, in other words, I am telling these stories, but please interrupt me anytime you like, like a nightclub performance, and some are here, I putting buttons in your hand or your seats are all rigged so that when you squeeze your buttcheeks it causes something different to happen on the screen. It's more of an installation environment, where the presence of the narrator force is very minimal, but the presence of the design force is pervasive. On one end is what you want me to focus on is your story and the other is what you want me focus on is your interaction, your game play.

Interviewer: But that raises the question about if 'game play" is a place we will ever search for meaning, or is game play a different pleasure, not storytelling.