Just as Ernest Edmonds mentioned,”there are three kinds of engagement:Attracting,sustaining,relating”(Edmonds,12).In the article Art,Interaction and Engagement,he divided interavtive art systems into four situations which were termed”Static”,”Dynamic-Passive”,”Dynamic-Interactive” and “Dynamic-Interactive(Varying).The last two situations are when the works are influenced by the audience and they are closely related to the artifact that I would like to create.He also simplified four kinds of interactive art systems into”Responding,varying,influencing and communicating”(Edmonds,13).
From my point of view,interaction means acting with each other ,whether it was the acting between people,computers or between people and computers.More importantly,this was a two-way acting,which meant both sides had to respond to the other’s reactions.Besides,interaction should be something that is playable or subjected to change.Hence,a successful interactive experience should match my definition of interaction.And I think the prompt also showed idea that was in tune with my thoughts”Make an experience where the user sees the system’s response, and takes more action in response, in a continuous loop“.And here I will show two examples to express further.
The first project is is a device which uses wires to connect a helium-filled sphere with 15 drums.As the people play the drum,the sounds are converted into light waves and then reach the sphere.When the sphere receive the signal of light waves,it will show flexible points on the screen.Of greater interest is that the intensity of points depends on the speed and intensity of the people’s drumming.During the process,it’s not hard to find that not only the sphere but also people act–for the former,it’s about receiving the signal and changing it into variable images;for the latter,it’s about playing drums and watching the changes of image.As the action goes back and forth,the two sides’ respondings match my definiton of interaction,which is”acting with each other”.It’s also self-evident that the project is subjected to change since the waves vary when the users hit the drum with different paces and intensities.So it’s definitely a successful interactive experience.
The second project is a VR game called Beat Saber.In the game,the game use two devices that looked like swords to cut the cubes while following the rhythm and the music.Here,the VR device showed the user different cubes as instructions for “hitting”.Then the user make actions based on the instructions.After “hitting” the cubes,new animations on the screens would appear to let the user notice that he had successfully hit the cubes in the game.Through this circulation as well as two-way acting,the user can interact with the VR device and achieve great fun,which fits Ernest’s ideas of”Responding,varying,influencing and communicating”(Edmonds,13).Therefore,I regard it as a successful interactive experience.
Reference List
1.Edmonds E. Art, Interaction and Engagement. 2011 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation, Information Visualisation (IV), 2011 15th International Conference on. July 2011:451-456. doi:10.1109/IV.2011.73
2.The prompt of Final Project:https://wp.nyu.edu/shanghai-ima-interaction-lab/final-project/
3.Peter Erskine’s CROMOS_ Solar Spectrum Rainbow Art,Peter Erskine Mana https://www.manamana.net/video/detail?id=70417#!zh
4.Josh Dub’s Youtube Video:THIS BEAT SABER LEVEL IS INSANE (3000+ NOTES) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ehSPtWoiuc
