I define interaction as a process: listen, consider and respond. As Tigoe published in the blog, “planning interactive artwork is similar to a director working with actors”(2012). I also came up with an example to better show my definition of interaction. Let us suppose, for example, there are two people having a conversation. A says to B. And B listends A’s words and collect them to consider. Finally B gives his response to A. And to add more according to The Art of Interactive Design written by Crawford, I think is the more detail process of the consideration part. B gathers in all A’s words and assembles them into a coherent whole, requiring effort on B’s part and considers those words. After cogitating for a while, B turns his thoughts into words and responds to A. This part is similar to the conversion of interaction. And the interative process repeats back and forth. For example, during class we used Aduino and microcontrollers to run a specific program interacting with us. And we typed INPUT, OUTPUT and then sended. The Aduino panel received the order and then LED was lit.
What’s more, there is still something should be distinguished. We should distinguish interaction from reaction. Interaction is the situation or occurrence in which two or more objects act upon one another to produce a new effect which resulting from such a situation or occurrence while reaction is an action in response to a stimulus ( like the breaking branch).
Now I have proposed my own definition of interaction. Then I will research two interactive art projects, one which aligns with my definition and one which doesn’t.
The aligned one is called Sleep Like Mountains created by Lotta Stöver. It enacts a process of digital embedding and embodying. The installation measures the topography of a human body and compares it to geodata sets of Earth, searching for a most similar location, where the topography of the human body and Earth elevate and digitally situate in similar ways. It attempts to (re-)discover bodies in landscapes and vice versa.The installation consists of a custom horizontal planar 3D scanning machine, a projector and a software for finding similarities among the generated height data of a human to the height data of Earth. The motors are controlled by an Aduino Nano. Every quarter-second it takes a distance measurement and sends it via Serial communication to a Processing sketch that visualizes the height data. After all parameters have been compared, the next set of SRTM geodata is loaded and the proces
s repeats.
I think this interactive art project is highly aligns with my definition. Because it includes the process: listen, consider and respond. Measuring is the listening part . The Processing software then loads the first set of SRTM geodata and starts the search by comparing the scanning data of the human body to the geodata. And this is the part of consideration. After analysis, it shows the result which is the part of response. The result changing according to diversity people indicates it is personalized and interactive.
The not aligned is AR show. According to MANA website, this Lantern Festival, there is a VR show held in Tianjin(2022). It is an experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer. We can see a virtual tiger and some other objects. This seems like an example contributing to my definition. But acutually. This is a single reaction. No matter what viewers do, the AR will react as the original procedure designed by computer. So there is no the process I defined interaction but reaction.
Comparing these two example, we can clearly understand the definition of interaction and distinguish interaction from reaction. To sum up, the interaction needs at least two objects to “communicate” with each other. Like the process: listen, consider and respond. In detail, A motivate B to respond. And the response will be received by A leading to some new inspiration. And then this routine repeats.
References
1.Visnjic, F. (2022, Feb 16). Sleep like mountains – (Re-)discovering bodies in l andscapes CreativeApplications . https://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/sleep-like-mountains-re-discovering-bodies-in-landscapes/
2.EVE VISION. (2022, Feb 16). 2022天津元宵节AR秀. https://www.manamana.net/video/detail?id=1804683#!zh
3.Crawford, C.(2002). Art of interactive design : A euphonious and illuminating guide to building successful software. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pkJCLM0wjjHuojKtURwPJV2aFNaDQ56r/view