Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses):
Copying and originality are quite controversial topics when it comes to art, especially AI art. We tend to try to come up with fully new concepts, as some of our ideas might sound a bit too similar to preexisting concepts. This article talks about how it’s okay if your idea isn’t original, because there’s opportunities for you to make it so. The repetitiveness of certain project themes in physical computing can help users, especially those new to physical computing, learn to create variations of works that inspire them. It is a great means to study and learn concepts that are foreign to you, as you can recreate the work and later build onto it and make it more your own.
I like how the author encourages people to keep going through with an idea even though they think it’s not original. As someone who is still a beginner at physical computing, recreating unoriginal work is a great way to gain experience at the methods, while not needing the brain power to come up with something new when I don’t even understand the basics. The list will come in handy to me as gloves, video mirrors, and things you yell at are in my interest. I like how he also mentions the potential drawbacks of a few of the themes, and explains a situations where that could occur.
Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen:
I liked how almost brutal and straight to the point the author is about the concept of only being able to guide the audience through your interactive work and then shutting up and letting them work their way around your piece on their own. He makes a lot of good points about having to let the audience/users think for themselves when it comes to interpreting interactive art, and the acting example was a wonderful way of putting that necessary autonomy into perspective.
“You can suggest intentions, but you can’t give him interpretations. You can give him props to work with, or place them in the way so he’ll discover them. You can suggest actions, but you can’t tell him how to feel about those actions; he will have to find it for himself.”
It actually reminded me of a recent interaction I had with a friend who needed feedback on his Sound Project. It’s a project solely focusing on audio, with no visuals, and I got a bit lost by the middle and he had to explain what was happening for me to get it. Reading this piece reminded me of that because my interpretation of it wasn’t exactly how he wanted it to be, but he couldn’t just force those ideas into my head. Even after his explanation, I still couldn’t hear what he was pointing out, so my interpretation of his project would’ve been great feedback for him, since it would allow him to see from a perspective where he isn’t interpreting his own work. He can work on “setting the stage more” now that he has “shut up and listened.”