Chronus Exhibition

This exhibition contained many inspiring, technology pieces. I enjoyed this exhibition much more than other art galleries because they made you think. In order to understand these machines, you had to walk around them, and see how they are performing their purpose. This contrasts completely to non-technology artwork because there is a higher degree of interaction between us and the technology pieces rather than the non-tech pieces. I really liked walking around the machines, and trying to figure out what each part of it did. There was only one piece that was directly interactive, and this was the machine that moved according to one’s position in front of the sensor. Experimenting with my position in from of the sensor created the interactivity between myself and the machine. It sensed by location and acted accordingly.

Research

“Walking City”  -Ying Gao

I think that this dress is a good example of interaction. It responds to stimuli from its environment and moves accordingly. It uses motion sensors in order to detect distance from an object to itself, and when an object gets too close, it moves rapidly to tell the other object to move away. Despite following the basic structure of an interactive experience, listening to stimuli, thinking about it, and responding outwardly, this project lacks a continuous motivation for interaction. While it does move, it does not provide an other kind of interaction. 

“Moon” – Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson

The project to “draw on the moon” is an interactive website that allows users o draw on a square on a sphere that they have labeled the moon. This website is a fantastic example of an interactive experience. While on the website you can not only draw on your own square, but you can maneuver around the moon, and click on others squares to view their drawings. 

An Interactive Experience

Earlier this year, I defined interaction as two parties both sending an output to each other, thinking about the stimuli, and responding based on the information they receive. My midterm project has two forms of output after receiving information, an LED lit up and a buzzer sounded. While I achieved the standard definition of an interactive experience, I was left feeling like there should be more to my project. I learned from the midterm that a good interactive experience will make the user want to interact with the project again. If a motivation to keep interacting isn’t there, then there is almost no point is interacting at all. The two projects that I did research on represent this perfectly. These two projects are very different, and both strive to achieve different types of interaction. The dress achieves physical interaction, while the moon allows the user to interact with the world created digitally. Between the two I think that the moon project creates a better interactive experience. This is because there is more to interact with on the website, and seeing all of the different drawings creates a motivation to keep interacting. When interacting with the dress, there is only one type of output, which is just it moving as a reaction to movement around it. While wearable interaction is an amazing innovation, so far the better interactive experience comes from the website.