The Chronos interactive art exhibition demonstrated how technology, art, and interaction could work together to produce pieces that are both entertaining and thought provoking. In my experience, art exhibitions are generally one dimensional, leaving the viewer with little opportunity to engage in the work beyond viewing, and reacting to the piece as such. Non-interactive, one dimensional art invites the viewer to engage with it internally, but the experience essentially ends there. The Chronos exhibition allows for a more intimate experience with the art because of the interactive qualities of many pieces. Interactive art not only invites one response of the viewer, but rather, at least two.
The first interactive project that stuck in my mind, and that I think about at least once a month, is an M&M themed music making game, in which the user drags and drops different M&Ms figures to different, labeled spots in a window, each character adding an instrument to a musical ensemble. While, unfortunately the original website appears to have since been taken down, here→ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xdvZMwV7DI is a Youtube link to someone playing the game. After some consideration, I probably continue thinking about this game so often because of how effortless it makes the act of making music. In a similar fashion to a game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, this little M&M’s online game really makes you feel like a musical artist; you have access to different instruments, characters, beats, and melodies which creates a sense of personalization and accomplishment for having dragged and dropped these animated candies with human traits onto the stage.
Another interactive project that tickled my fancy was a simulated soccer free kick simulator, in which the user approaches a physical ball on the ground in front of a projector screen. The user is then prompted to kick the ball at the screen, which is displaying a goal. After the ball hits the screen, a sensor detects the presumed trajectory of the ball, and determines whether the user would have scored or not depending on their kick. I found this concept particularly interesting because of its ability to bring something that would otherwise require a lot of space to essentially anywhere. Not only does this project compress the activity, but it also does not necessarily detract from the original experience; everything on an actual soccer field that a player directly interacts with is present in this virtual version, which is why I particularly admired the concept.
My initial definition of interaction relied fairly heavily on the idea of what makes an effective prompt, and the extent to which the user/project give and take experience feels organic or natural. For example, in the case of the soccer free kick game, while I have yet to actually play it myself, I would likely consider this interaction to be fairly good, in that it both invites the user to interact with it (by way of a soccer ball sitting on a grassy platform in front of an image of a goal), and directly responds to the users engagement with it by transposing and image of the kicked ball onto the screen, providing the user with an immediate and clear response to their action. My goal for my final project is generally on which transfers the experience one has with something bigger or that requires more resources to something smaller while retaining a high level of meaning as it relates to its original form. I think the soccer free kick example is much better at achieving this goal than the M&M’s music game because, while the M&M’s game makes more accessible to the user the means to create a personalized song, it does not give the user as direct a sense of the actual interactive experience of making music, whereas the soccer free kick example does. In an article in https://www.intechopen.com/, definitions of interaction are coupled with tips for successful interactive design. One of the more interesting words of advice from the article was the idea that the system in question should be effectively positioned to serve the physical needs of the person engaging with the project. For example, the soccer free kick project accomplishes this goal fairly well by including an actual sized ball, and a screen big enough for the user to have a relatively immersive experience taking a free kick. The M&M’s game, however, transposes the experience of making music, but does so in a fairly limiting way; for that project to have achieved a more immersive experience, a larger, more hands on setup may have served it well.