How is our idea derived?

(My contributions along the way are bolded for clarity)

We took the original idea from Ricci’s proposal. She proposed an artifact, based on the story of Omelas, that involves an ice little boy statue standing in the middle of a circle, and an outer ring where visitors can stand. The statue resembles the poor little boy in Omelas. The artifact works by distributing temperature to the ring and the circle, so that the less heat visitors experience, 

the more heat goes to the boy that it melts and vice versa. I summarize the general principle of the artifact is like a zero-sum game so that

“the more you suffer,

             the less I suffer.”

So, we settled down on the idea. But after a while of contemplation, I found that feeling of hot and cold may not be the easiest thing to act out and demonstrate, so that I proposed using electricity shock instead, which logically should take less effort to present. The underlying mechanism is that the more people press on the outside, the more current goes into the person in the middle and the less current goes into the outsides, so that they suffer less but the middle one sufferes more; reversedly the less pressure is applied on the outside, the more current goes into the outsides and less for the inside. If there’s no pressure, there will be no electricity passing through. If the pressure goes to maximum, the least outsiders suffer but the most the insider undertakes.

How did the idea turn into sketch?

The original idea is to place an inanimate sculpture in the middle, whose melting may give a visual response to the visitor. 

Somehow I found it not that interactive since we are simply dealing with something that could only show two status, melting or not melting. From what I learnt from Crawford’s the Art of Interactive Design, this provides a limited level of interactivity. So, Melissa suggested that we may substitute the fake boy with a real boy-which was me. It’s a great improvement because now it’s an interactivity between people only mediated by machines and electronics.

How did we plan the stage play?

I am greatly inspired by Tom Igoe’s Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen by, where he talks about the concept of perceiving the interactive artifact as a stage play with viewers being the actors. Also, Rainroom-by rAndom international gave me a hint in the way of performance. Apart from the direction interaction with the installation, Rainroom also features the experience of spectators, namely those who are watching other’s interaction. So, I came up with the idea of putting up a life drama, in which all of us pretend to be a group of tourists in a museum who have not seen the artifact before, and manifest how they may react towards such an artifact. In this fashion, I thought that we should be capable of revealing not only the human-machine interaction but also constructing a meaga space for performance from which spectators can see the whole installation as an ongoing show.

We agreed on the primary and immediately started to brainstorm how the artifact should be built to facilitate our performance. Melissa, Shelly, and I met on the day before holiday and checked the materials that we may get use of. Unfortunately, the largest cardboard available wasn’t large enough to support the possibility of letting everyone stand on the circle simultaneously. So, we turned to handprints instead. Shelly suggested that we should separate the handprint parts away from the major circle component in the middle, which extends the space and makes everything clearer for the audience as well.

Once the basic design had been settled, we set for building the artifact. We took turns to cut out the circle, the most critical component of the artifact, which symbolized the start and our cohesion as a team. 

I found the circle vulgar with the raw material exposing. Seeing sheets of black paper around, I came up with the idea to cover the circle in black. And we did it. I coated the four legs with black sheet paper and Shelly painted the circle.

Afterward I suggested we should divde the labor so that it could be more efficient. Consequently, Ricci and me were assigned to make the supporting structures under handprints. Ricci and I did a quick discussion and decided to build four columns with wasted water bottles. How did we find the bottles needed? We became bin boy and bin girl, namely digging bottles from the trash bins. It’s not the most glamorous job to do of course. Luckily, shifu and ayi helped us and guided us to B1 to the bottle mountains, where we quickly gather the bottles we wanted.

We moved on to build the column. I worked with Shelly to build the first prototype of the column, namely the prototype within prototype. We cut the bottles at bottem and neck alternatively to fit them together into a tower and used the glue gun to keep them connected. After completing the first prototype, I ran reliability verification, in which I kicked the bottle tower around and punched it real hard, but the bottle tower stood the adversary so that we decided also to involve the prototype tower into our final play. Eventually, we filled the bottom bottles with water to increase the stability.

The final artifact looks like this.                                                                                Our script is attached here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Critical analysis and assessment

I personally favor the project presented by Group 5. Their project is a suit of wearable device, including a VR google and a pair of gloves, which are connected to each other using cables. If I understand their play correctly, the suit constructs a virtual space for the user, through authentically mimic the five senses excluding the taste, to relieve one’s stress. The interactive artifact is designed in accordance with the nursery room in The Veldet. And their design has taken a step even further that by adopting the pair of gloves, the suit can even produce touch feelings. Adding on to that, using virtual reality google, comparing to a huge room, prevents the potential danger of running into a real lion (if there may be one).

Their artifact is definitely highly interactive and interesting, but I would take a slight grain of salt in terms of its uniqueness and originality since we have seen a lot of similar devices in movies (e.g. Ready Player One elaborates perfectly on the interactive virtual world). Though I would argue the defects here cannot obscure their virtues. Their presentation is exceptional. The formation is clear and focused. We know exactly what is going on on the stage. The play is engaging and really funny, especially how they reify what Lesley (the man in blue) sees. Also, Lesley acts out the whole scene in a natural and unmannered way. And I think the performance part has been good enough. 

 

Great job!  Everybody!

The Veldet

In the short fiction, the nursery room, along with other technologies, alienates kids from their parents. On the contrary, I would propose an installation that bring broken people back to together. A chamber that aims to cure and conciliate people’s psychological wounds. 

Before a patient comes to the chamber, his case would be studied thorougly by a group of psychologists (the parent’s nice neighbor), who will reappear the scene where the incident happened. In the chamber, he will return to his memory, recountering the very scene that causes his trouble. Instead of manifesting the scene exactly as how it was, the patient’s physiological indicators are monitored in real-time. If any over stress occurs, the virtual characters would act less aggressively, allowing the patient to overcome the very situation. As the patient faces the situation iterally, he may regain confidence.

I have seen similiar design in Captain America’s movie: Civil War. The prototype Tony Stark’s showing here only manifest the story faithfully. In our nursery curing room, patients now can interact with their memory. The installation should help many with their mental problems. However, people may well then readily stuck in their memories, unwilling to get out. Just like the way Cobb has to dream to see his long-gone lover every day, in the movie Inception.

 

The Plague

The sci-fi story depicts a plague that will turn infected people into stone-like, but actually alive creatures. This new form of life, sensing time differently from human, is not accepted by human beings, who choose to incinerate them all. 

The woman says something thought-provoking, that “we cannot deprive them of the right to exist because they move slow”, which leads us to the ethic of killing. How do we justify killing other creatures? The artifact I bring to this world is an installation, including a VR goggle and a receptacle that one may fit his or her body into. The artifact features the ability to simulating how slow creatures sense time. It creates a virtual world in which everything appears to be really fast around the viewer. In order to make viewer’s movement slow accordingly, the receptacle uses servo motors, that viewers could only move in extremely slow pace. Adding on to that, the servo motors allow the installation to mimic how stone-man perceive human’s action on them. It could life you up and down, tilt you left or right, rotate you in all direction.

As a matter of fact, the artifact has viewer tortured on purpose, in order to balance the power dynamic between the fast and slow, to put fast human beings into slow stoneman’s shoes, to let them feel related. The artifact should lead people to revisit the ethic of killing, to question the morality of incinerating stonemen.

The ones who walk away from Omelas

The novel depicts the summer festival in Omelas, whose happiness and comfort lie solely on the endless misery of the boy. The artifact that I come up with is a dark room with a window on its side, in which a participant sits, whose physiologial measurements are measured in real-time. There are also other participants on the outside of the window so that they can see each other. However, the room is soundproof, while a mircrophone is placed outside and a headphone is placed inside, meanign that there will be no mutal communcation. Luckily, wires are connected to all participants. A non-fatal but rather painful current runs through them. Here comes the interesting part. The happier the participant inside the room is, the greater current run towards those outside the room; the happier the participants outside the room are, the greater current run towards the one inside the room. In a more tangible term, their happiness and comfort should be negatively-correlated. Despite no direct communication, interaction is fulfilled through the wires. Participants should swap their position at an interval of time.
This artifact again focuses on resolving the imbalanced power dynamic between the boy and the citizens. Through experiencing the artifact, they should be more aware of the misery. Maybe free the boy eventually at some stages.

How do I define interaction?

Interaction is an iterable process in which two subjects alternatively sense, process, and respond to each other’s action; and is a continuous variable that can be graded by how subjective it is.

Sources that enlightened me

• According to Crawford, he personally defines interaction as “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak,” while in more academic terms, he puts “[we] should replace listen, think, and speak with input, process, and output” (Crawford, 3). This reminded me of the idea iteration in which the same process will be carried out based on the former result, which generates rather different result even when there’s only subtle nuance in the first input.
• “We might speak of interactivity as high, moderate, low, or even zero, thus solving our problem with the subjective nature of interactivity’ (Crawford, 4). This pointed out my long misunderstanding of interactivity as a boolean property that can only be on or off. The idea of interactivity as a spectrum is fairly enlighting.
• “Changes in media technologies are correlated with social change. If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of the postindustrial society, which values individuality over conformity” (Manovich, 41). Manovich articulates the features of new media. From what I understand, I priortize the idea of individuality as the critical feature of interaction as a form of new media that determines its level of interactivity, for the reason that the interaction should be subjective, rather than giving the same outcome every time. Otherwise, the interactivity should be described as quite “closed” (Manovich, 41).

The project that aligns with my definition

Rainroom -by rAndom international

A brief introduction

The installation allows visitors to walk through the rain (imitated by the water downpour from the ceilings) without getting drenched. A motion sensor caputres the movements of visitors as they wander along in the rain. The installation automatically stop the water from dropping in the areas where visitors stand.

Why does Rainroom support my definition?

We can identify all the essential elements listed in my definition in this piece of art. The movement of visitors is sensed by sensors, which later is sent to the computer to procees, and later output is generated upon, that decides where is going to rain and where is not going to. On the other side of the story, visitors sense the raindrops falling down around them. They may have the guts (a result of the process going on in our brains) to take a leap of faith into the rain. They may well then stay where they are. And iteratively sensors and computers and waterpipes work.

Something more intriguing is that the installation exhibits a rather high level of interaction. Since it takes time for the raindrop released to get to the ground, if the installation stops rainning at the exact moment visitors enter a certain area, they are going to get wet undoubtedly. So, there should be some predictions going on in its underlying mechanics. The installation predicts where people would occur based on their former movements, which shows a great sense of subjectivity.

Men controll rain. In terms of its aesthetic value, the installation on one hand, let us to like a god; and on the other hand, allows us to revisit our relationship with nature. The dark ambient in the installation creates a sense of intimacy in which visitors could contemplate. From a performing and interactive point of view, the art challanges how much we trust in the installation, while at the same time, serves as a mega stage for performance from which spectators can see the whole installation as an ongoing show.

The project that doesn’t align with my definition

Clock Clock -by Human Since 1982

A brief introduction

The seemingly digital clock displays time in digits. However, it’s made up of 24 individual analog clocks. A group of six clocks in a 2×3 arrangement forms an individual number. So, essentially, it’s a digital display made out of analog components. 

Why doesn’t Clock Clock support my definition?

In this project, the clock displays time in its own way regardless of the viewers around. Obviously, the installation doesn’t sense human actions, no to mention process and respond to them. But, though it doesn’t fit in my defintion of interaction, I actually quite like its design language. The clock imitates digital function through analogous equipment, forging something blended and very much new. Also, we are able to see how people’s perception about time has changed though the course of history. As the artists themselves remark that “[the art] re-contextualizes time in a mix of old and new, analogue and digital.”