Define Interaction
I would like to adopt a definition similar to that in The Art of Interactive Design, the author of which defines interaction as “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak” (6). There’s of course a difference between low interactivity and high interactivity in this definition, and I’d like to define the lowest interactivity as “the initiator (A) of the first action in this process would get a response of this action, which will in return influence the next action of A”.
https://www.manamana.net/video/detail?id=70417#!zh
https://www.manamana.net/video/detail?id=5671#!zh
As much as this piece created by Alienware also features interactivity in its description, I consider it not one of the interactive art projects that I define, for it doesn’t quite generate the dynamic, reciprocal interaction between human and machine/human and human. In my opinion, this work is more about providing a certain experience for people but not quite taking responses from them to reshape themselves.
Read:
The Veldt: The “nursery” in this fiction seems to be a sort of holographic laser projection but with “all dimensional, superreactionary,
supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens” (4); the fictional function of this device does involve “mind-reading” in the sense that the projection is controlled by its user, the kids’ imagination, and this projection in return gained so much power (from the spirit? the will-power? or the brain wave?) that they became able to erode the reality, as the end of the fiction suggests. my envision of an artifact in this world would be simply a network that collects this power of”imagination” by plugging all these users of “nursery”-like devices to interact with each other (which can drastically change reality and possibly lead to the disastrous outcome as the fiction implies).
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: This fiction imagines a heaven-like city where people live blissfully at the sacrifice of one child’s grievous suffering. The city is described as an egalitarian (except for the one child) utopia with the highest but non-destructive technology. Just as the fictional drug drooz fits in this Bacchanalian background of the city that elates people spiritually, it is convenient to imagine that they also have a device to help them tamper with their memories in other to suppress the unpleasing knowledge of that suffering child. As an interactive artifact, this device is granted intelligence to the degree of identifying memories that is so unpleasant that people would rather get rid of, but as people make the choice to jettison them, their personalities would change due to the loss of essential feelings and experiences, so do their threshold of different senses (pain, pleasure, etc). This could be likened to the already existing therapy methods like Electroconvulsive therapy which use small electric currents to trigger seizures and change the brain chemistry of people with mental health conditions.
The Plague: If the virus doesn’t necessarily kill people, but rather just slows down their motions drastically while extending their life as well as their perception of time, I can’t see why there aren’t any people who are willing to be infected and explore how to live in this new form. In this “new world”, people might be able to life with interactive devices that turns all the rigid surfaces into soft materials that won’t cause damages to their bodies.