During the group project, I defined interaction as the input and output of information between two or more humans, machines or animals, and stuck with the definition for the midterm project (I made my device to conform to that definition). I still believe this to be a suitable definition of interaction; however, it should be limited to humans and machines, as animals would fall beyond the scope of this course and don’t necessarily interact with machines. I believe interaction will always involve an input of information which will be processed and produce an output of information (be it in the shape of a click, words on a screen, a sound, among other things). With this definition in mind, I looked for a project that conformed to this definition and one that did not.
The first project I researched is one that aligns with my definition of interaction. “New Angles” is an LED installation by Super Nature which consists of a panel of LEDs that lights up in a different way depending on gestures made by a user. I find this installation aligns with my definition of interaction because it shows a clear input, processing and output of information, the input being the gestures and position of the user, which is received by a camera mounted on the installation, which produces the output, LEDs lighting up in different patterns, this installation needs the user to function, thus making it interactive. I was unable to find a video of the device working, however, there are pictures of it on the website I consulted, which is linked below:
The second project I researched is one that does not align with my proposed definition of interaction: a recreation of Columbine Schools’s auditorium at the Whitney Museum of American Art, by Bunny Rogers. It consists of a recreation of the school’s auditorium seats and a video of the rest of the auditorium projected on a screen watched by the people seated on those seats. This installation does not conform to my definition of interaction because the viewers do not have to give any input to a device in the installation to receive its output, it is just a one-sided communication, meaning that this installation could perfectly function without anyone sitting there (the video could still be played). A description of the installation can be found here:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywwg4g/american-artist-columbine-auditorium-whitney-bunny-rogers
Having seen these two examples of interactive projects, a better definition of interaction would be “the exchange of information between two or more humans or machines”, because an input is information that is processed in order to produce an output, a process that could happen both from human to machine and from machine to human.