But in a multimedia piece the paths that an interactor can choose from are defined by the author. In Being Boring the point was to determine, by means of users' participation, the entertainment of two girls who were left without television and had nothing to do. The public could suggest options or vote for those supplied so that the girls could create a life without TV. But what was supposed to be an exercise in democracy ended in tyranny: the actresses weren't allowed to voice an opinion; people voted and they obeyed. I'm thinking of doing a different, extended version: trying democracy with just one person to see if he or she can be given a better life or if democracy is a myth which we should be suspicious of in a country like Mexico, where the value of democracy is being questioned, what ends it serves, and if it's not better to follow the advise of the elders, which Mexico has followed for centuries, or concepts like that of “ dictablandas ” (“soft dictatorships”) proposed by Mario Vargas Llosa.

SARA CONSTANTINI: Can you generalize these new approaches using the non-linear narrative you propose?

FI: Part of contemporary literature is produced on-line, and includes, in addition to letters, other elements like video, audio, interactivity… This raises various questions: on the one hand, who can read these novels, and how do they find them. On the other, why do they decide to leave the tradition. We have to be willing for these new novels, movies or narratives to have their own rules. But learning rules demands too much effort from the reader, user or interactor. It's a question of content and aesthetics, or maybe of form and structure, but where these disappear to produce an experience and a meaning. A year ago Mark Dery told me, in Avenida Revolución in Tijuana , “Fran, nobody wants anarcho-syndicalism in their literature or films.” Why? It's too complicated. I understood, but wanted to keep swimming against the trend, and that's where it's going, I think. But maybe, in such a globalized information era, the computer is the very minimum we need to understand what is happening nowadays.

LA: In one of your texts you mention the necessity of converting the digital into a “habitable space.” The relation between the real and virtual worlds recurs in your work. What do you mean by “habitable” in a digital context?

FI: It's part of a long process. When the Internet first originated, we spoke about future worlds, virtual communities, cyberpunk, rave… you could talk about peace, love and unity. It was an innocent time, but very vibrant. Later we decided it wasn't enough to meet on the Internet, but rather not to forget the real world, which also occurred to Hakim Bey, who spoke about “temporary autonomous zones.”