Case Studies

Greetings! After another boring but educative essay-reading session, now I would like to bring to you

Audio Aquarium

by Gerogia Tech scientists.

The researchers claimed that they would like to help those with hearing disabilities enjoy aquarium. They use camera to caputre the different movements of fishes and corrolate them to particular musical instrument with varying tempo and pitch.

What I find most intriguing about this installation is that, despite seemingly solely based on the movements of fishes, it actually falls into what Edmonds denotes as dynamic-interactive(varying) (3). Fair enough, you shall ask why. Edmonds describes the system as “with the addition of a modifying agent (could be a human or it could be a software program) that changes the original specification of the art object” (3). In this auditory aquarium, fishes are the agent. They indefinitely change the specification of the art. On the top of that, their movement are also subject to human interaction. In a word, fishes per se involve great physical computing, which is further combined with the music generator, generating a high level of unpredicability.

Meandering River

This audiovisual installation is consist of real-time generating art by algorithm and AI composed music.  It mimics the shifting behaviors of rivers by showing how they change the surface of the earth, from a bird’s eye view. The orientation brings forth a new perspective for people to conceptualize space and time from a much greater scale.

This project can be regarded as an excellent digital artwork, but in terms of interaction, it doesn’t do well. According to my understanding, it belongs to the “Dynamic-Passive” category, defined by Edmonds. This kind of work “has an internal mechanism that enables it to change” (Edmonds 2011). Here, this internal mechanism should be the AI algorithm built in the program. There is interaction exists, for the viewers observe the amazing change of the nature, which they cannot perceive in their normal life, and generate some feelings, insights, or new thoughts in some ways. Overall, the change of the meandering river changes viewer’s mind and (probably inner world) without the viewer’s engagement. That is a one-way and one-time interaction, which might leave some impacts but is neither long-term nor interactive enough.

In scope of Edmons’s theory, this work of art should be catogorized as “dynamic-passive” (2). Some may argue that the project lacks interactivity, which of course, I acknowledge it as well. Notwithstanding that aspect, I find there’s something innovative about the project. In his essay, Ernest Edmonds focuses on the dynamic-interactive cases of interactive art, from which he unfolds four kinds of interactive systems, including responding, varying, influencing, and communicating (13). Apart from that, he also emphasizes the long-term engagement aspect of interactive art. Leave the artifact in the street and allow people to revisit it every day, a long-term and developing engagment can be found.

My concept

From the very start of our group research project, I define an interactive project as a device that involves input, processing, and output. The experience that I gained from developing midterm project hinted something inspiring to me, that for a interactive project to succeed, artists should weigh user test and revision more, but both of them have to be conducted in an already-set pattern.

From what I read in paragraphs on conceptual art by Sol Lewitt, the functions of conception and perception are naturally contradictory. What it means by this contradiction is that the work of art can only be perceived after it’s completed, while the process of conceiving an idea must happen before the production. To keep the idea straight, one should bear in mind to avoid the subjectiveness and arbitrariness along the creative process, and one good way to make it happen is to follow a pre-set plan. It’s not saying that nothing new will come in halfway, but rather how the idea is enriched and developed need to be in control. 

In terms of the user test, perception of the art always involve “the apprehension of the sense data, the objective understanding of the idea and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both”, denoted by Lewitt. So it works for the perception of an interactive work of art. Artists have to be aware of the physicality the artifact presents, in scope of the three points, so that the preoccupation to a certain audience may be better.