In my group project, my definition was largely understood in conjunction to Crawfordâs text, where he states that interaction is, âa cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak.â In more technical terms, âIf we want to get academic, I suppose we could replace listen, think, and speak with input, process, and outputâŚ.â My previous interpretation of interaction was receiving, processing, and communication between two or more parties/objects.
Through my midterm project, I designed a PesKey bot that would remind users to take their keys by making alert sounds, lighting up, and flapping servo motor arms up and down. The inspiration for my midterm project was Lumiere from beauty and the beast, and I wanted to animate/have a static object come to life through angry gestures. My midterm project helped me liken interaction to giving life to something: giving something the ability to receive information, and the ability to make decisions and act. PesKeyâs limited decision-making abilities and rudimentary interactions made me realize the complexity interaction can reach and the untapped potential of interaction humans can program into inanimate objects.
The increase in products involving interaction is perhaps rooted in our desire for stimulation and for new, interesting happenings, as well as our social nature. So, aside from interaction being literally defined as input, processing, and output, we can look more broadly at object interaction as our attempts to give static objects/phenomena more complicated, human like qualities, so that we humans can experience even more exciting new happenings. Hence, my new definition of interaction looks at interaction in both a broad and narrow context; interaction is the receiving, interpreting, and outputting of information, and in relation to static objects, interaction is humansâ attempts at giving objects complicated human abilities such as thinking and socializing, in order to experience new exciting encounters.
For my final project, I researched projects on creativeapplications.net and found two projects that were tagged with the keyword âinteractionâ, the first project being HĂŠlène Portierâs 20°C, âa collection of devices designed to question our relationship to data through a series of physical challenges that enable/disable access.â and the second project being Rafael Lozano-Hemmerâs âCall on Waterâ. 20 degrees C brings to light and makes us think about the complex machinery and processes behind fetching website data by forcing users first light a candle to run the motor of a toy boat, and only until the motor is running will the userâs news feed download. This project aligns to my definition of interaction in that the userâs phone interprets data (whether the boat motor is running or not) and makes a decision (to show or hide the userâs news feed) and acts accordingly. Like my midterm project, it also brought to light how complex interaction can be and how we attempt to make simple objects more humanized/give objects the ability to âthinkâ in order to experience new things. While fetching data is normally a mundane, 1 second process, Portierâs project gave new meaning to what fetching data can be.
However, Rafael Lozano-Hemmerâs âCall on Waterâ did not align to my definition of interaction. While Rafaelâs work seeks to create platforms for public participation, and his âCall on Waterâ certainly produces an audience reaction, the device itself in Call on Water does not actually interact with users. It is the humans’ actions that are interactive, not the device that is interactive.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer did not give âlifeâ to his art installation, or allow his device to make more complicated decisions. Rather, he relied on humans interacting with other humans to make his device âinteractiveâ.
Links
INSTINT â a Gathering Exploring Art, Technology & Interaction