Alexander Cleveland
Oct 10 2019
Professor Marcela Godoy
Self Reflection Project One
In this project, my group and I defined interaction as a continuous conversation between two or more corresponding elements. We came to this definition by looking at a series of projects that included a fire wall and a click canvas. In the fire wall, by Mike Allison, subjects interacted with the moving spandex wall by touching it, pushing it, and pulling it. By touching it, the person would then alter the movement of the webbed surface on and around the spot being contorted. I thought about how the hand was constantly interacting with the wall as it moved from side to side. Whenever the hand moved, the wall responded in immediate fashion. My group and I found the basis of our definition of a “continuous conversation” within Mike Allison’s project. The hand represented one element and the wall represented the other element in the conversation. What makes this interaction continuous as we define in our own definition is the constant rate of change along the wall as it is being touched. The wall is unique to each touch and continues to function whenever it is being touched. Its movement is ever present when interacted with. Also, the wall does continue to move on its own after each hand has been taken off, again making it a continuous interaction. This inspired our own project wherein we have sensors that detect body temperature and adjust the home temperature accordingly.
When we reviewed the click canvas, my group and I found that it did align with the second part of our definition but didn’t fit the narrative of a continuous interaction. A hand would touch the square and thus turn it a different color. While this may fit the narrative of a conversation between two or more corresponding elements, my group and I felt that it was not a continuous motion. This is because once the wall is clicked, it has fulfilled its interaction by turning a different color. While other scholars such as Chris Crawford choose to define interaction as a “cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak.”, we felt it was important to have a continuous motion involved in the making of our own device (Crawford, 1). The difference between the wall and the click canvas is that the wall continuously moves during the interaction, while the canvas only moves once when it is clicked. In the canvas, there is no continuous element, but only a digital on-off nature to it.
When creating our own definition of interaction, my group and I thought back to Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media where he uses an example of coded video games to exemplify a controlled interaction between the AI character and the human player. Manovich says that these AI players are free of movement to an extent “But because computer games are highly codified and rule-based, these characters function very effectively; that is, they effectively respond to the few things the user is allowed to ask them to do: run forward, shoot, pick up an object” (Manovich, 33, 34). The AI characters that Manovich refers to respond based on the action of the actual player. By doing so, it makes it a continuous conversation between the two corresponding elements. So as long as the actual player points a gun at and threatens the AI character, the AI character will continuously respond in a multitude of programmed actions. The AI has a mind of its own, but only in response to the player (What is New Media, 34). The balance of read and react between the two parties formed the core conversation part of our definition. In Chris Crawford’s What exactly is interactivity?, he also makes an important point that helped form the continuous part of our definition. Crawford uses a conversation between two people as an example of his cycle wherein he says “This process of conversation cycles back and forth, as an iterative process in which each participant in turn listens, thinks, and speaks” (Crawford, 5). Thus meaning that as long as the two parties are present and speaking, there is a cycle of conversation between them. By using these two sources, my group and I formed the definition of two elements having a conversation in a continuous manner.
When making the smart home interactive body temperature sensors, my group and I took into account the importance of the continuous interaction aspect as our greatest challenge. We looked at the fire wall and saw how every time a hand was touching it, the wall would respond in various ways. We took this concept and applied it to a multitude of objects used everyday alongside the human body. Rather than a singular wall, we would put sensors on a phone, chair, bed, table, pillow, door handle and many more things to detect body temperature. Before this step, the person would set their own preferences in an acclimatization setup process so the sensors would know how to correctly respond to their body temperature. This fulfilled the second part of our definition by establishing a “conversation between two or more elements.” To fit the narrative of a device in 2119, we wanted the subject to have as little work to do as possible. We didn’t want the interaction to stop at a sensor just responding once as the subject sits down. Because if a subject was quite cold initially and the sensor made the room abnormally hot as a response, eventually the subject would become accustomed and possibly become too hot. In order to avoid this problem, we created a continuous relationship where the sensor is reading the subject’s temperature every minute that they are in contact with the object. As long as the hand was touching the fire wall, it reacted to the movement, and as long as the subject is sitting on the chair, the sensor adjusts accordingly to the preferred temperature. The body and sensors are having a conversation just as the click canvas showcased. But what makes our definition and project different is the continuous nature wherein the sensors and body are constantly adjusting to always have a preferred temperature.
Sources Used
http://aaron-sherwood.com/works/firewall/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wBoiakCPAAQhGQzb0sNNVmOyWDphRXj2/view