Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses)

One of the challenges I came across in the IM courses and assignments so far has been about creativity. Creativity for the assignments has always been one of the challenges I faced because every time I look for ‘inspirations’ on the internet, it just provided me a list of things I couldn’t use since they weren’t ‘original’. And as I read through the list of creative physical computing artworks, I noticed that a lot of ‘successful’ works incorporated at least 2 senses. If increasing the senses allows works to be more interactive and attention-grabbing, would having 5 senses incorporated in the work be as attractive to the users? How do we find the optimum line in which the senses and inputs are used in the interactive work that satisfies and pleases the users? 

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

This reminded me of another IM elective I took last semester. I had to make a field guide for the campus and we took a long lesson off just to try the field guides on strangers’ perspectives. The big take away message from this was to never assume people are going to think and act like you. They are such unpredictable beings that probably the whole idea of creating something to perfectly satisfy the needs and intentions of an object is rather skeptical. 

For my midterm, I made a car flicking game where the player had to guess the winning line by flicking their fingers and observing the LEDs that provided clues to how close or far away the winning line was. I also incorporated sound as a feed back; when the player lands on the line, the winning sound plays, and the green LED lights up. However, if I hadn’t explained about my midterm project, people would have had no idea how it worked until they managed to try it several times. Therefore, this reading about the article reminded me of the importance of feedback; how it’s crucial for the work to hold some kind of logistic clues and hints to lead the user to successfully use it. 

I also really liked the idea of how interactive work isn’t ‘like a finished painting or sculpture’, and that it’s a continuous work which is built up by the users’ responses and feedback.