—Project Research—
- Crows are Chased and the Chasing Crows are Destined to be Chased as well, Transcending Space
https://borderless.teamlab.art/shanghai/ew/crows_transcending_space_shanghai/
I choose this piece because I was quite impressed when I experienced it in Teamlab Borderless.
The following is the official narrative: “Crows are rendered in light as they fly around the space, leaving trails of light in their paths and creating spatial calligraphy. The crows chase one another and in turn become chased themselves. When the chased crows crash into one another, they scatter, turning into flowers. The crows attempt to fly around people in the space, but when they crash into a viewer, they scatter, turning into flowers in the same way.”
As a user, when interacting with the project, it really gave me the feeling that I was part of the whole thing. It was in a complete dark room behind a curtain, with mirrors and digital screens, giving the participants a sense of being in a “blackhole”, which simulated their instinct of walking around to explore. As a result, the whole process interaction began. The reason why I see it as a successful interactive project is that it is “informing” the users what to do without any verbal or visual signs, but by creating a certain theme that will spark the user’s natural reaction and starts interacting. The users are actively participating in the whole process, from the beginning when the first crow crash into them and become flowers to the very ending when the last crow vanishes, and that is exactly the most important part of interaction- users are active parts in the movements. Also, there is also another factor that makes it successful. In this project, interactions are not only happening between users and the digital part (crows in this case), but the digital part is also interacting with itself within (crows also mashes into flowers).
In all, interaction in this project is happening every second since the user step into the room. As they began exploring or even just standing there for nothing, all kinds of interaction are taking place. The view of each second and each round are highly customized and is impossible to replicate.
- Unnamed sound sculpture embodiment of sound 2012
https://onformative.com/work/unnamed-soundsculpture
The main idea of this project is about to record motion data of a real person and to showcase it in more digital ways using a 3d point cloud.
It is a good and interesting way for visualization, which is a quite important way of demonstrating the results of interaction. However, the reason way I’d say it’s less successful is that it fails to match my definition of “giving feedback to the users so that they can explore more during the whole process”. The project is fantastic in digital modeling and programming but it is just imitating what’s going on with the user. What’s more, it wasn’t easy for the users who haven’t been told about the project to figure out what is going on and what they should do.
—Elements for A Successful Interactive Experience —
The following is my original definition of Interaction:
- A performance where audience is the cast.
- An art form where 2 or more participants use multiple senses to enjoy.
- A project allowing participants to explore themselves.
- A process for the designer to experience how your work communicate with participants and what the feedback is like.
After learning, I’d like to modify and add a bit to it.
- For the first point “A performance where audience is the cast.”, audience engagement is always one of the most important parts in interaction.
“Interactive art systems involve artefacts and audiences equally. (Edmonds ,16)” Audience should at least be one of the several agents of the whole project that is both taking in and giving out information and movements, thus influencing the process of the work. “The agent could be a human or it could be a software program. (Edmonds ,3) ” In the case of “Crows are Chased and the Chasing Crows are Destined to be Chased as well, Transcending Space“, the agent was both the audience and the “crows”, which added to the interaction.
- For the second point “An art form where 2 or more participants use multiple senses to enjoy.” I no longer agree with the front part, interaction do need two parts, but participants have no limit in number. “There may be more than one participant and more than one art object. (Edmonds ,3)” Similarly, there can be only one participant and only one art object.
In terms of the latter part, I still think it important to blend several of the five senses, because senses are the best ways in which the designer can convey hints and help the users to explore and experience on their own instead of giving instructions. “The key points about the work’s intentions were to restrict communication between participant to a very low bandwidth, to provide no instructions or code and to add a certain amount of complexity.(Edmonds ,5)” It affects a lot in how fast users can really engage themselves in the whole process and how efficient the interaction and communication between agents are made.
- For the third point “A project allowing participants to explore themselves.”, I ‘d say the range of exploration shouldn’t be limited to merely themselves. A successful interaction should be able to stimulate the user’s interest in exploring not only themselves but also the process, and develop their willingness of exploring it overtime and engage also with the changes over long periods of time.
- For the forth part “A process for the designer to experience how your work communicate with participants and what the feedback is like.” It still makes sense but there are still something to add. From the group project and my midterm project, I realized that customization is rather important. And from the Teamlab example, I found that uniqueness also counts, just like what Edmonds wrote:” the process that takes place, or rather, the performance of the art system cannot be predictable. (Edmonds ,3)“
In conclusion, a successful interactive experience should be engaging, unique, customized, multi-sensed and integrated.
—References—