My definition of interaction evolved and altered at a large degree during my learning process of this term. The reading “The Art of Interaction Design” gave me the first reinforcing moment to render my definition of interaction a specific thing. Crawford uses metaphors in this article to compare interaction with the dialogues between actors. He thinks that to form a successful act, actors need to first listen to others’ words and then consider them before finally give them their responds. This process matched with three steps in interaction which are listening, understanding and responding. And my definition of interaction first got a vivid description. After reading this article, I defined the interaction as two or more objects listen, understand, and respond to each other’s actions.
The projects that I would like to include are the Anti-Drawing Machine project created by Soonho Kwon, Harsh Kedia and Akshat Prakash, and The chAIr Project which is a collaboration between Philipp Schmitt, Steffen Weiss, and two neural networks exploring the reversal of human and machine roles in the design process and industrial production. The former program, in my opinion, successfully aligns with my definition of interaction for the following reasons. First, there are two objects in each trial: the pen and the paper. The camera will first capture and analyze the movement of the pen, and then transfer message to the gears to rotate clockwise or the reverse. And the rotation of gears will move the paper in different direction from the pen so that it can prevent the pen holders from drawing the image they want. This progress evolves all the three steps of interaction in my definition. The process of the camera capturing the movement of the pen is the first step, listen. And the analyzing part is the camera thinking or understanding the movement. The demand the computer transports to the gears is the third step which is to respond.
However, The chAIr Project doesn’t align with my definition of interaction because the chairs will not respond to people, therefore, it is a one-way practice rather than interaction.
My definition of interaction also evolved by drawing experience from my group project and my midterm project. Comparing to my group project which is an interactive 4D billboard, my midterm project—the Chameleon is more realistic which can be achieved through current technology. What’s more, it involves real-time interaction with the environment around the device. The color sensor will first analyze the RGB indexes of the environment color and then respond to it by reflecting the same color it understands. From this experience, my definition of interaction further developed. Comparing to simple interactive process like users push buttons to require a response from a device, this kind of devices convey a more sense of interaction because it is real-time.