#Blog 1 What is Interaction?

Definition of Interaction

Interaction is just like conversation, which involves two or more actors, or purposeful creature (Crawford, p.3). Those actors collaborate to carry forward the process back and forth in which they take turns to listen, think, and speak, or put it in more general terms—input, process, and output—which Crawford considered to be “gauchely techie”.

There are 3 things that we should pay attention to while trying to define interaction:

• Simply “react” doesn’t count. Neither one-direction lectures nor one-round conversations can be considered as interaction. To make it easier to understand, let’s take actor A and B as an example:

In the first situation, only A input, and B just process.

In the second situation, A input, B process and output. And the process ends.

  Interaction should be “sustainable” conversations that are cyclic (Crawford, p.3) and both sides can give constant feedback as many rounds as they like.

• It should emphasize individuality and uniqueness. Just like “new media can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (Lev Manovich, p.36), the “output” of interaction can also exist in different versions. These different versions should not be stiffly programmed, instead, they should be subjected to even the tiniest bit of changes, or nuances by the other actor(s). Thus, actors can get a tailored experience with interaction.
• Interactivity should be considered as a variable (Crawford,  p6). The degrees of it should be subjectively determined by individual actors. An example used by Lev Manovich is the Nintendo refrigerator: some people can’t be entertained by this, while others actually will be entertained by playing the refrigerator door game. So, it’s not fair to mark a process with a binary judgment of intellectual utility or interactivity if it meets the standards above.

Interactive Art Projects

As for interactive art projects, the standard is even higher. It should humbly act as the beginning of a conversation and then let the audience/participants take over, rather than giving guidelines for every move, which may result in misleading them to follow the artists’ flow of thought and limiting the versions of interaction (Tom Igoe). The comparison of the two projects below helps to build my definition of interaction.

• Project that aligns with the definition of interaction: Into the Wind.

• • Experience:

“Into the Wind” started as an experiment to reproduce a natural process in natural space, based on technological technique and human perception. The main focus of this project is the wind. It consists of an interpretation of the blowing bubbles process. It invites the viewer to replicate the wind by triggering special mechanisms with their breath and turning breath into wind by computer programming. The wind then activates and moves parts of the mechanisms to create bubbles. 

 (By Witaya Junma)

• • Why and how it aligns with my definition?

Obviously, this project involves at least two actors. Human and the computer participate in cyclic conversations that human blows, computer processes, outputs bubbles, human input the status of the bubbles, process, output and this can go on and on.

The shapes and forms of bubbles are varied depending on how the viewers blow, as they observe the whole process and mechanism, thanks to the work transparent structures. The results are different every time, making each interaction unique.

The project also encourages the audience to experience and question the processes. Are they observers or are they part of the mechanism? This then add on the degree of interactivity by offering intellectual utility.

• Project that doesn’t align with my definition: the Lost Passage.

• • Experience:

The Lost Passage claims to be an interactive experience for the web that creates a digital home for an extinct species called passenger pigeon.

The pigeons are 3D modeled, textured, and animated as a low-poly model using Blender to be resurrected on the internet. They are trapped in a cube, yet can move freely.

The walls of this cube are painted with a visceral image of a moving landscape that is created using a machine learning tool called GauGan. Traditionally, it takes a segmentation map as an input and outputs an image of a landscape. A terrain model was constructed in Blender using the same materials that GauGan expected and exported a sequence of images shot with a camera. These were fed frame by frame to GauGan to create a moving-image of a landscape. It was eventually painted onto the walls of the box using smart texture wrapping techniques in WebGL. 

(By Amay Kataria|Collaborators: Yu-Jeng and Shaohui Kwok|Supported by BeFantastic and Art-A-Hack)

It is presented in a website where the audience is brought in close proximity to the flock accompanied by a soundscape. By panning the mouse, the audience can observe the flock’s murmurations from different perspectives and feel like they are part of this themselves.
 

(By Amay Kataria|Collaborators: Yu-Jeng and Shaohui Kwok|Supported by BeFantastic and Art-A-Hack)

• • Why and how it doesn’t align with my definition?

This project meets almost all requirements. It even has a deep meaning (eulphean):

It displayed the capability of industrial humanity that annihilated even the most plentiful of natural resources. This subject raised the question about how the relationship between humans and other non-human living entities like plants, animals, and nature has evolved in the past? Isn’t it a paradox how we have repeatedly found companionship in some of these entities, and yet intervened to annihilate some of the other ones?

However, it still canNOT be considered as interaction for me because it fails at emphasizing individuality. You may feel confused: isn’t it operated by human and can respond to different operations?

Yes, but these responses are stiffly programmed. Wherever people choose to be in the coordinate, the response is preset. And considering that this project is presented online, it must be formed by finite discrete units ( Lev Manovich, p.28), so, the results of the people’s individual choices are limited. Thus, it cannot be thought of as an interactive art project.

Conclusion

Comparing these two projects above helped me think through the slightest details and develop my understanding of interaction. Even though both projects offer a channel to communicate and all seem to be pretty interactive at first glance, the difference is that the former can have infinite possibilities of the output, while the latter can’t.

References

• https://www.manamana.net/video/detail?id=235369#!zh
• https://www.creativeapplications.net/member-submissions/the-lost-passage/
• https://thelostpassage.art/
• https://www.tigoe.com/blog/category/physicalcomputing/405/
• http://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/ima-wp/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/08/05164121/The-Art-of-Interactive-Design-brief.pdf
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wBoiakCPAAQhGQzb0sNNVmOyWDphRXj2/view

Feb 13, 2022, Jingqiao, Younian Liu