In my opinion, what makes a strongly interactive system is, as Crawford put it, the “cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak”. It reminded me of something I am learning about in another class of mine, where we read Sartre. A French Philosopher and a major player when it comes to existentialism. In his work, ‘Why Write’, he makes a point in saying that with written forms of art, like books, simply writing it isn’t enough. The reader and the action of reading are what bring the work to life. He describes writing as a creative direction in which the author guides the reader to think in a certain way, but the perception of the reader is still uniquely theirs. In a way, we have presented the speaker of the two actors, which would be the writer. Then the listener and thinker would be the reader. The role of both actors here isn’t passive engagement; the listener should be thinking about what the speaker is saying to make connections and give what the speaker’s saying a broader meaning. Likewise, the speaker should think about what they say and how to respond to what was said by the listener when the roles are reversed.
I believe that implementing in p5.js what I have in mind would be rather difficult, but a welcome challenge. User input really matters here, and I think adding aspects like microphone access might be a way to consider that. While I’m not sure how complex projects can go on p5, I think something where it registers voice commands to do certain tasks would be very interesting and interactive. Also, having seen previous IM showcases, a potential idea I have in mind, which would combine arduino and p5js would be a functioning (or almost) Spiderman web shooter.