What is interaction?

From my personal perspective, interaction should be a general process that contains the receiving, processing, reacting components of at least two sides that are involved in the process. According to Crawford, the art of interaction is ” a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak”(5). Perceiving this from my definition, the “listening” would be “receiving”, the “thinking” would be “processing” and the “speaking” would be “reacting”. As long as these three elements could be properly interpreted and presented in the design, then there comes the interaction.

The interaction project which can be aligned to my definition:

The project that I find could be aligned to my definition is called “Sisyphus”. It is a robotic installation with two robotic systems engaged in an endless narrative of construction and deconstruction. As the little robotics aside rebuild the standing stones, the big robotic in the center would wave its robotic arm and destroy what the little ones just made. During this process, both sides of the system received, processed and reacted. They captured the information of whether the stones are crashed down or not, and then processed this information through a program written with computers, and then make the move–to rebuild it, or to redestroy it. Therefore, from my perspective, this work could be counted as “Interaction Design”.

 

 

 

 

The project cannot be aligned to my definition:

The project is called “Arche-Scriptures” made by Alberto Harres.

I really like the idea of this work. It combines historical artifacts with modern technology, through programming and machines to read information from ancient porcelain artifacts, then retrieve and sonify these information, and convey these transformed audio to the audience to listen. But, in the whole process, only this machine is receiving, processing and reacting, scanning the words on the artifacts, audio recording them, and finally sending them to the audience. Neither the audience nor the artifacts responded. Therefore, from my perspective, this project should not be counted as “Interaction Design”.

 

 

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