Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen
This piece highlights the difference in making interactive art and making art. While artists (and viewers alike) generally believe that a work of art is an expression or a statement – interactive art is much different in several aspects. The artist’s role isn’t to make a statement but rather start a conversation. The viewer will then interact with this and have an experience that ideally will communicate what you want it to.
Here Tom Igoe gives practical advice as to how to make interactive art – that ultimately boils down to setting the stage, shutting up and listening to the audience. At the start of the course, this idea would have seemed foreign to me, but through both the readings and personal experiences I have come to realize what Tom intends to say here. Additionally, I love the example of the director Tom uses here, and his overall writing style!
Lastly, I believe interactive art – as the way Tom puts it – in a way serves to liberate the artist. It suggests that as an artist, one doesn’t have to bear the entire burden of meaning or impact. Instead, by creating a framework for interaction and then stepping back, an artist can allow the artwork to breathe, grow, and morph through each interaction. At the same time, it also poses a challenge: can an artist resist the urge to dictate, to instead become a facilitator of experience?
Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses)
Here Tom Igoe provides us with several examples of the kinds of physical computing works that show up frequently. Of these, I would like to reflect on 3 ideas in particular:
I particularly liked the idea of a “meditation helper”. Beyond directly building something to help with meditation. What really interests me is the concept of reading a person’s heart rate, breathing rate, etc. These factors are easily accessible these days, and it will be very interesting to build technology infused clothing that is practical and useful.
The Scooby Doo painting art type seems overdone but something about it still remains intensely creepy. I would love to incorporate something of that manner in a project I do going forwards.
Lastly, floor pads are also exciting. I am curious as to if we can somehow engineer them in a way that lets us walk in place (like a treadmill and have that actually simulate a walk for a character in real-time etc. Moreover, there’s a lot more that can be done with such pads if we keep adding layers of complexity!