As I have read all three readings and watched many videos about interactive arts. The most impressive thing left in my mind was the action of response among different figures or entities in the whole interactive process. It is definitely that giving out and analyzing information then giving back the actions are the most important components in interactive art pieces. Then, when we talked about the definition of interaction, Crawford has talked about it in terms of a conversation in The Art of Interactive Design, “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen think, and speak”. However, I think it’s a definition in the context of pre-electrical society, which means the nowadays interaction can be defined on a large scale of electrical device and alive entity. 

    So in the digital age, interaction is a kind of information processing between two actors, as one of the entities gives out the signal and the other one responds corresponding information, which their combination can give out a result to the whole system. Lev Manovich has mentioned that the principles of new media are gradually formed during the Industrial Revolution, which includes “modularity”  “variability”  and “automation” in his article Language of New Media. I think what he argues in his point of view is very direct and specific because media is one of the major carriers of interaction, the action of the sensor is the typical example of interaction, so the interaction can be presented even more representational.

A good example of interactivity:

This is a projection that can interact with the people who donate their two euros to this machine by using their credit cards, then the people will receive a certificate paper and also get the satisfaction of helping a starving or hiring kid. People give out the information of two euros and the machine will respond by printing a certificate, at the same time, the Charity organization can also use the donation to help some poor kids. This machine definitely carries out interaction with people who donated.

A not-so-good example:

This project is aesthetically amazing. I love their concepts and the installation. However, the projector just gives out the projection and doesn’t get any reaction back from the receiver, so it’s not an interaction art piece in the strict sense.