Interaction circulates around our daily lives in so many ways. It may have various definition. In my own definition, interaction is how machines collaborate with human beings in order to accomplish a goal. The collaboration process may require listening, thinking, and speaking processes. So many projects out there that require interaction. Some might contain more interaction process. Others might not include so much.
One project that I have found that clearly aligns with my definition of interaction is “The Evil Eye-Optical audio record by Indianen”. The artist of this project builds the project mainly to “investigate how printmaking could produce another kind of information, transforming material into an object with a new meaning” (Visnjic, 1). The project asks you to put an audio record on the record player, then it would pass through a device that has a light sensor. The next step would transform this audio into an electric signal by the device. This project is one of the many projects that includes interaction throughout the processes.
Like I have mentioned earlier, there are some projects might have a different definition for interaction than I do. For example, “Anti AI AI-NN wearable for recognizing synthetic voice” is a project that has a different definition for interaction. The Anti AI AI is a project that is designed to recognize the synthetic voice of the wearer’s environment. According to the article by Filip Visnjic, the artists of this project say that “We wanted the device to give the wearer a unique sensation that matched what they were experience when a synthetic voice is detected” (4). From my understanding, the wearer simply has to put on the device, then the device would do all the detection processes for the wearer. In that sense, I do not see much interaction that requires listening, speaking, and thinking processes in this project.
Last but not least, in our project—Magical Mirror—we intended to communicate a sense of interaction throughout this project. As a group, we do think that interaction requires communication and collaborations between the device and the human being who is actually using it. We did not the device simply does all the work for the experiencer. In addition to the sense of interaction, we also wanted to include a bigger meaning for the existence of this device. We did not want to only solve the issues of choosing what to wear for certain occurances. But we also want to solve a serious environmental crisis behind this not knowing what to wear issue. We have made the device interactive by giving the experiencer the opportunity to talk with the device. The experiencer also has the right to reject any suggestions from the device. So it is not like that the project can determine anything for the experiencer. It is just limiting options for the experiencer. In the sense of solving a serious environmental crisis, we intended to make all the clothes that are in mirror’s considererations to be sustainable. The clothes are either made from recyclable materials or they have been over-used with professional cleaning processes. With these two core values in mind, we have come up with this “Magical Mirror” idea.