Author: Jackson Pruitt

Project Proposal 1: Pirate Chase 2.0

This first project is an adaptation of the midterm project completed by my partner and myself. The project was a game that allowed two users to blow boats across a body of water in order to reach a sensor at the opposite ends, setting off LEDs to signal who was the first to reach the sensor. The purpose of this project was to see how players would combat one another to achieve the desired target, however, this was not fully realized during the testing of our project. The new design for Pirate Chase would focus more directly on this idea of how users must overcome the competitive nature of the game in order to reach the target. By setting up the game in a large, circular container with only one sensor in the middle– like an island– the opportunity for more players would increase competition and further break down this idea of a sort of “tragedy of the commons” dilemma. The circular design would also suggest to users that they may need to continuously move around in order to blow their boats to the center, which would likely lead to situations where one user would have to move around or in front of another user. The addition of processing would create a much more lively and engaged design for our pirate-themed game. 

Project Proposal 2: Mood Board

The idea for Mood Board is to have mesh stretched over a large rectangular box that when pressed at certain depths would display a different color. When lightly pressed the color of the mesh will turn blue. When increasing force is pressed on the mesh, the color displayed will turn redder. The inspiration for this project comes from an exhibition I saw at the Rubin Museum in New York, where an artist created a very similar display as a sort of reinvention of the Tibetian prayer wheel. My project takes this design and builds upon the purpose of this interaction by using it to show users how the level of force they use represents their mood. Often times we neglect how our moods may affect others and the repercussions it may have on either their perceptions of us or the moods of others around us. With processing, displays of the user’s mood would be shown.

Project Proposal 3: Is it natural?

The idea behind this project would be to combine elements that exist in nature, such as plants, water, or dirt, and that of something technologically made. The inspiration for this piece comes from the work seen at the Chronus exhibit where an artist combined both natural and man-made segments to create a Turing installation. I enjoyed this concept a lot as I think that we should explore opportunities to show that nature can still coexist in technological space and to represent the effect of that, whether it be positive or negative in the eyes of users. The project would perhaps provide users the option to control a mechanism by either using a natural method or a digital method, juxtaposing the two actions as users continue to interact with the mechanism. 

Interaction Lab Research Report

Although I was unable to accompany the class during the field trip, my independent journey to the Chronus exhibition was quite intriguing. I enjoyed how the various sculpture installations were not only aesthetically captivating but also conceptually profound. The piece that stuck out to me the most was Martin Howse’s Test Execution Host. The art installation was composed of several elements, such as rocks, plastic jugs, running water, metal rods, and a computer monitor. Although it was hard to understand the conceptual purpose of this piece, I enjoyed the creative effort of compiling natural or seemingly incompatible materials with technology. This is something I’ve yet to see in other exhibits of non-technology based work, as the conceptual ideologies or metaphors are mainly contained in things that seem natural. When using technology in art, I am constantly being reminded that this is something human-made. This ability for technology in the art to have this effect makes these conceptual ideas much more apparent and offers a more profound expression for artists to share their ideas. 

The first interactive art piece that comes to mind is the one I encountered at the Rubin Museum in New York during my semester abroad. The collection of pieces, curated by Elena Pakhoutova, is titled The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel. The project is a compilation of works made by various contemporary artists focusing on the reinvention of the prayer wheel, which is known to be a tool used by Tibetan monks containing a roll of repeated mantras for spiritual guidance. The work that gave me inspiration to even take this class is Scenocosme’s Metamorphy. This piece consists of a circular cloth that activates these mandala-like images when pressed upon. For me, I enjoyed how the interactiveness of artwork can align with the conceptual ideology of that piece. The purpose of Metamorphy takes inspiration from this prayer wheel and reinvents this interaction with sensors and LED lights. In my final project, I would really like to include something that not only has aesthetic appeal but also carries meaning to its conceptual origin. 

Metamorphy by Scenocosme

An example of an interactive piece that was rather unsuccessful was the Rain Room at the LACMA. My experience in this immersive art piece, although extraordinary fascinating and fun, does not work well with my definition of a successful interactive artwork. Essentially, the work is an immersive room with perpetually falling rain that stops whenever people are detected. Therefore, the concept of the room is to walk in the rain without getting rained on. Although I think the technical accomplishments of this piece are fascinating, I think it does not allow participants to properly interact; in fact, they don’t interact at all. My response to this work was simply that it is fun to walk in a room of rain without getting wet. The failure came in that there was no attachment to some conceptual ideology that spoke something more profound or offered some unique insight into the artist’s perspective.

Rain Room by Random International 

Looking back, I would still define interaction as a metaphorical conversation. However, since having researched more interactive pieces and attending the Chronus exhibit, I would have to add one more idea that I believe makes an interaction truly successful. I think that interactive work should allow for a recipient to gain something new after encountering the interaction. This something new could be a piece of knowledge, an emotional experience, a reflection, or an idea. This idea is exactly in line with what Bret Victor writes in his article about the need for vision in current interactive artworks as “visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world.” For me, the prayer wheel works were successful because they allowed me to reflect on this spiritual practice in a new form, whereas the second artwork gave a rather unimpactful experience. 

Works Cited
https://rubinmuseum.org/events/exhibitions/the-power-of-intention

https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/rain-room

http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

          

For the recitation exercise, I chose these images by Sol Lewitt as inspiration for my processing drawing. I felt that the first image, specifically the one on the far left, was simple enough in structure/shape while still having an intriguing composition. Once I began trying to draw a similar image in Processing, I ran into a few problems. At first, I made individual vertical rectangles that were evenly spread out with a transparent circle in the middle. I realized that it would be difficult making the horizontal rectangles fit exactly within the circle as it would require me to know the exact coordinates of the circle’s arches. I then went back and looked for further inspiration from the same artist where I found the second image. I enjoyed this almost random display of color and I thought it would be a good exercise to practice using the color wheel. In order to make the image a little more interesting, I then made every other rectangle transparent to create a sort of weaving effect around the circle. I thought that using Processing was a perfect tool for creating an image like this as I was able to create the exact shapes I wanted to replicate while also picking almost identical colors to that of Sol Lewitt’s.

Final ImageCode used to create the image

At the beginning of the semester, I had a rather vague understanding of the term “interaction”. My initial assumptions pinned the definition as something that you must use your senses to invoke a reciprocated action. Before taking Interaction Lab, previous examples of interaction came from ideas like video games, robots, and human conversations. Although my current definition of interaction is not entirely off from my preconceived understanding, I believe interaction is as simple as a metaphorical conversation. Having read Crawford’s definition from “The Art of Interactive Design”, my definition of interaction stems from his idea that you must have two or more actors that participate in a dialogue through thinking, speaking, and listening. Looking at other interactive projects, such as Baba Tetsuaki’s Frectric Drums— a device where four users are required to hold each side in order to create a circuit that allows for them to create drum sounds with their palms– I was inspired to develop something unique in its interaction in a way that allowed people to think collaboratively in order to get a device to respond. We decided it would be an interesting thought experiment if we created a game in which disguised itself as a competition where users would have to decide whether to sacrifice their opponents in order to win when in reality the objective could be more easily achieved when working together. 

The concept of Pirate Chase started with the idea that we would create a competitive game in which users initially worked against one another but ultimately would realize the benefit of collaboration. Having completed the recitation in which we were required to build a game where users competed against each other to press a button the fastest, I was inspired to create a similar carnival-style game. Thinking back on my very first understanding of interaction, I thought about what senses would be interesting to utilize in my project. The idea of making boats that required you to blow on them to move stemmed from this idea, as I realized it’s a lot more challenging and fun to interact with something you can’t physically touch. This led us to the idea that two users would stand opposite one another and compete to get a boat across a body of water, in which a sensor would then illuminate an LED light signaling their victory. The boats we 3D printed and attached plastic-bag sails fastened by toothpicks. The boats were then placed inside a large plastic container filled with colored water, where we then attached wires to divide the space into two separate lanes for each boat. Lastly, we placed infrared sensors on each end of the plastic container that when in close proximity, a red LED light would illuminate. 

Throughout the development process, we faced many hurdles. During user-testing, the first major drawback to our initial draft of Pirate Chase came from our boats. The first model of boats we made were rather small and, therefore, often sank in the water. After seeing how hard users would blow onto the boats when faced with a competitive challenge, we realized that our boats needed the structural integrity to consistently float under strong force. At the last minute, we found a new model of boats that adequately satisfied our buoyancy requirements and the problem was fixed. Another problem we ran into was that users weren’t really sure what the objective of the game was without explanation. However, by adding in the wires to create lanes, this quickly fixed the problem as it clearly directed users where to blow their boats. In addition, by placing the LEDs more in a more visible location to both users, the outcome of winning by reaching the sensor became more apparent. Lastly, we decided to add a third electronic component that set off a buzzer sound as we thought it was a clearer way of letting users know when the game starts and when to begin blowing. 

Once again, the goal of our project was to allow for two users to compete against one another with an interactive game, which in turn would allow them to realize the benefit of collaboration. I believe that we tried hard to make our project as fit to our definition of interaction as possible, and to some extent, we succeeded. The idea of blowing on the boats in order to get them to access the sensor is perhaps most in-line with our definition of interaction. However, looking back on our original concept I believe there was an opportunity to make the game more interactive and even more fit towards our goal for the project. When watching users interact with Pirate Chase, I think it wasn’t very obvious that they could blow against their opponent’s boat and therefore the thought experiment was less effective. I believe that a more suitable design for this project would be a large circular container where a singular sensor is placed in the middle, like an island. With this new design, more boats could be added and competitiveness would not only amplify, but the effort to get your boat to the island would become more of a challenge. I think in this case, users would be more likely to interact with other users’ boats, whether it be for their own advantage or as a collaboration. I’ve realized from this project that it’s important not to stubbornly hold onto preconceived notions or assumptions when creating something, rather it’s best to listen and adapt to aspects that aren’t currently working for the benefit of making something more interactive.

 

Bibliography:

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/1q7adHt5BCv0QQMwBVBaGEfG6pGGfQX9b/view

Question 1:
What kind of machines would you be interested in building? Add a reflection about the use of actuators, the digital manipulation of art, and the creative process to your blog post.

As we continue to learn about new mechanisms and functions of code, the possibilities for creative innovation has skyrocketed. We now know how to operate motors, a very valuable source of motion. Motors can be found in fans, cars, cellphones, and a countless number of electronic devices. It’s up to me to think of how to combine these machines to create something interesting. In terms of the process, I feel it’s most challenging to find the medium between creative aspiration and skill-set. I want to be pushed in terms of allowing myself to think of unique and innovative devices, however, I am still bound by my limited skill-set. With that in mind, I believe with the actuators we’ve used so far there is still opportunities for unique innovation. It reminds me of creating a film with a small-budget and how the film is as good as it is innovative. Therefore, my limitations should only strengthen my need to be creative. This is easier said than done, but I’m looking forward to trying in my midterm project.

Question 2:
Choose an art installation mentioned in the reading ART + Science NOW, Stephen Wilson (Kinetics chapter). Post your thoughts about it and make a comparison with the work you did during this recitation. How do you think that the artist selected those specific actuators for his project?

In the reading ART + Science NOW by Stephen Wilson, artwork by Daniel Palacios Jimenez is referenced. The art piece, called Waves, uses motors to rotate elastic ropes creating various patterns and sounds. From my understanding, it seems Jimenez is using actuators as a way to express the visual portrayal of motion at various levels. The result of something robotic or man-made being spun in open space allows us to reflect on the nature of the movement. This is very much similar to the project we made in our recitation class as the two motors allowed us to physically visualize the patterns of recurring motion.