Interaction Experience
In order to illustrate what a successful interaction experience is like, I would like to divide the whole procedure into three stages: pre-interaction, interacting, and post-interaction.
At the stage of pre-interaction, the art project should be noticeable. As I mentioned in my research for the group project, interaction takes two objects to start a two-way communication. If we want to meet this requirement to start the engine of our artwork, we need an effective way to draw people’s attention and curiosity. There are two ways of doing so. The first one is the physical effect. As Ernest Edmonds described one kind of engagement called “Attracting” in his article Art, Interaction and Engagement, sound effects are advantageous in taking others’ notice (Edmonds). Besides, light effects, scent, or sensory stimuli are also good choices for raising awareness. The other way is emanating qualities. Bizarreness, drollness, sci-fi, or simplicity…One artwork does not have to look good to fascinate people. One example of this is a project called To-not-disappear by Luisa Fabrizi. To-not-disappear is a mirror, but when people stand in front of it, it will lose focus and color saturation (Fabrizi). Interactors have to shoot at it to get their images back (Fabrizi). With no people in front of it, it will just be an ordinary, big mirror (Fabrizi). Let’s imagine the scenario where the mirror was put in an exhibition with other artworks. The simplicity among all the complexities will make it stand out. Another example is “Aposematic Jacket” from Shinseungback Kimyonghun reported by Filip Visnjic. For the sake of self-defense, “Aposematic Jacket” is full of cameras to record everything happening around the user after he/she presses the button (Visnjic). As the publisher Filip Visnjic stated, the jacket gives off a warning signal. At the same time, the jacket is forbidding for all the cameras randomly scattered on it, which is bound to raise some curiosity (Visnjic).
When it comes to the phase of interacting, the artwork needs to continuously demand the users’ involvement and generate various results in response to the users’ behavior. As Edmonds argued in the article, a project can be “sustaining” to “retain that attention for a period of time. (Edmonds)” In order to achieve it, the users need more than one feedback from our artwork in response to their behaviors so that the users are more willing to continue interacting. For example, “The more you connect the less you connect” by Javier de Azkue. As Celine Wong Katzman reported,
This piece is about memory’s fragmented nature.Two separated 4:3 monitors on the wall are linked by 5 interchangeable banana plugs.The screen on the left shows raw footage from a VHS family video from 1992, and on one side of the monitor’s frame 5 color sockets stand as sources, where each source is a member of the family in the video. The screen on the right is a mirror of the left screen, where each socket stands as an input for these family members, and each input represents a memory mechanism, or a memory ‘process’. The user is in charge of connecting each member of the family on the left with a different process on the right and creating a collage of modified memories on the right screen, by filtering the content, reordering the frames, and erasing faces in real time. The screen on the left represents the unaltered past, and the screen on the right represents the way we tend to remember things (Katzman).
In the project, the audience needs to constantly change how the two screens connect to show the possible results of the simulated memory mechanism. By doing this, the user concentrates on the piece, and a solid user-artwork relationship is established temporarily.
The last stage is post-interaction, a vital stage that decides whether a project is successful. The artwork will be impressive if it has a narrative to tell. The designer of the project needs to have a clear mind of notions, values, or concepts they want to convey during the process of making the artwork. In To-not-disappear, Fabrizi wants to express that “give up the steadiness of beauty and coolness in exchange for presence and personality. (Fabrizi)” Her message is evident when we contemplate the interaction with her mirror. Most importantly, the audience can be inspired by her message and might change their views of themselves. A successful artwork can be instructive. In the meantime, the designer can leave the space of narrative for their spectators and invite them to be the “co-author” of the project. That is the time when “independence” comes into the picture. As I mentioned in the group project, the creator should not interrupt the process of the audience interacting. Instead, they should be independent and have their own interpretation of the project. An excellent project for understanding this is Augenblick by Manasse Pinsuwan and René Henrich. It is a wearable device that detects the contraction of the muscle surrounding the wearer’s eye and captures what is missed by them when they close their eyes or blink (Pinsuwan and Henrich). The user can wear it anywhere to record their day of life through the blinks of their eye (Pinsuwan and Henrich). The engagement from its wearer can last for a long time. Also, interest in the project can be unremitting for months or years. Edmonds’ “relating” model of engagement, which is “developing a long-term interest, which occurs when the audience wants to experience the work again and again, perhaps over many years,” suits perfectly here (Edmonds). What makes the work even better is that the wearer can generate their own video clip of the exciting things they may miss to keep for memory or share with their loved ones — they can generate their own content with this artwork. This example shows how people create something tangible. People can create intangible things in their minds with art projects as well.
In conclusion, a successful interaction experience contains three sound stages: people are attracted by the glamor of an artwork, they get intriguing feedback from it and pay attention to it, and they leave with something inspiring in their minds, or they create meaningful things to keep.
Work Cited
Azkue, J. de. (2021, June 30). SFPC Spring 2019 student showcase. CreativeApplications.Net. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.creativeapplications.net/maxmsp/sfpc-spring-2019-student-showcase/
Edmonds, E. (2011). Art, interaction and engagement. 2011 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation. https://doi.org/10.1109/iv.2011.73
Fabrizi, L. (2017). To-not-disappear. Luisa Fabrizi. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.luisa-fabrizi.com/to_not_disappear
Pinsuwan, M., & Henrich, R. (2020, May 21). Augenblick – wearable that catches moments when we blink. CreativeApplications.Net. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.creativeapplications.net/objects/augenblick-wearable-that-catches-moments-when-we-blink/
Shinseungback Kimyonghun. (2016, August 17). Aposematic jacket – wearable computer for self-defense. CreativeApplications.Net. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.creativeapplications.net/news/aposematic-jacket-wearable-computer-for-self-defense/
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