Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses)
This article goes through a recurring list of physical computing project themes that show up in classes every year, and I found it quite fascinating how the author encourages students to pursue repeated ideas. That resonated with me because I sometimes catch myself thinking of a project idea only to search if it has been done and end up just not going through with it with the mindset of someone has already done it and even better that what I would’ve done. I think that has stunted my growth and exploration that I probably could’ve learned a lot from. This also reminded me of how in traditional art, everyone paints a still life or draws a figure at some point. Nobody tells you not to draw a bowl of fruit because it has been done before. These things become a learning stepping stone in your work and I think that is just as valuable.
Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen
This article felt like a continuation of that idea and here the main argument linked interactive art to a beginning of a conversation and not so much a finished statement like a painting or a sculpture, and the moment you over-explain what something means or how someone is supposed to feel about it, you have already ended that conversation before it started. Coming from a background where I spent some time exploring traditional art, where the work is usually a fixed object that speaks for itself, I found this shift in thinking genuinely difficult to wrap my head around at first. A painting hangs on a wall and you bring yourself to it. Interactive work is different because the piece is actually incomplete until someone engages with it, and what they do becomes part of what the work is. I resonated with his comparison to a theater director working with actors. He says you can give an actor props and suggest intentions but you cannot tell them how to feel, they have to find it themselves. I think that is a really honest way of describing what good interactive design should do, you are building the conditions for something to happen.. And I think that is harder than it sounds because there is a natural instinct when you make something to want people to get it the way you intended. I feel that every time I finish a project and immediately want to stand next to it and explain it to whoever walks by. Reading this made me realize that impulse, as understandable as it is, is actually working against the experience I am trying to create.