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

I like Tigoe’s view of using interactive art as a framework to allow for a conversation between people and the work. I believe this approach can oftentimes lead to much more meaningful encounters than using the person as a part of the work, where the person reacts in a predetermined manner. An aspect that should be also be taken into consideration is the nature of the work, and the way in which the artist intends to express. Is the expression directed toward the immediate user, which would be the audience directly interacting with the work, or is it directed towards the bystander who observes the interaction between a person and the work? One of the most interesting elements about incorporating humans in art is that one cannot predict their reactions. This uncertainty is the key of why interactive art is so revolutionary, and by giving fixed instructions, the purpose would be defeated. Only when there is some room for exploration and genuine responses, interactive art can transcend the traditional categories of having a creator and a receiver of art, and instead combine it to be a two-way conversation between the artist and the audience.

An example of an interactive art piece that came to my mind is ‘Helena’ by Marco Evaristti. Evaristti placed ten blenders on a table, each of which were filled with water and a living goldfish. If a visitor decided to press one of the buttons on the ten blenders, the blender would run, and a fish would die. Superficially, it seemed like the only possible interaction was for the visitor to press one or more of the buttons, or not to do anything. However, another option that any visitor had was to plug the blenders from the power source, which no one did, which might be because the signifier for that action was much weaker.  The meaning of the piece is built through the audience’s interaction with the blenders. Would they decide to kill the fish, or let them stay alive?  What do humans do when given the power to decide over life and death of another being? Without the audience’s interaction, the work would lose most of its meaning. And I would say that the cumulative decisions of the audience are the key part of the artist’s expression rather than the experience of an individual audience member who decides to press or not to press the button. The artist, by making the artwork interactive, had found a way to expose a dark side of the audience that is rarely expressed.

Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses)

I found it great to see the variety of possibilities in all these examples of physical computing. My favorite is probably the video mirror- every time I walk past the IM lab I cannot help but make some weird moves as I walk past the screens.  The examples definitely gave me some inspiration for possible future projects or the midterm projects, and also some lessons on what not to do.