Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut up and Listen

Though the author of the piece is very much focused on interactive art, it seems that the article can be solidly placed in a discussion of both design and authorial intervention. Tigoe talks about authors providing basic context then letting the viewer/user/reader experience the work by themselves, and the way for the artist to do that is by using clear design choices to show how to interact or experience the art piece in question. In that respect, Tigoe seems focused on using clear design principles in interactive art so users/readers/viewers know how to approach the art and what meaning to derive from the interaction with it.

Apart from this, there is also a vein similar to Barthes’s Death of the Author, the idea that, once a piece of art is out in the world, it is up for viewers (or readers, considering the piece was originally written on literary work) to decide what meaning the piece holds through the piece itself, rather than through what the author/artist has to say about the piece. In a way, the authorial desire to say what the piece of art means takes away the agency of the reader/viewer/user. Instead, the piece should enable the reader/viewer/user to create meaning through the parts of the piece.

Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses)

In this article, Tigoe lists and explains a variety of physical computing projects and the multiple possibilities that a physical approach affords to both the user and the creator. All the possibilities seem, with my current skill level, manageable, though I wonder what, exactly, constitutes a “good” project. Put other way: what is a “hit” and what is a “miss?” Is a hit more complicated than a miss, or more simple? Does it matter? It seems that the baseline for a “hit” is how interesting it is and how many affordances of interaction it gives; in other words, something that is not entirely simplistic in how it responds to a user doing something. The hits seem to be those that mix a simple feature and add an interesting aspect to the mix, or alternatively something that takes inspiration in something simple and enhances it (like the drum glove).