Creative Reading Response:
I began the reading assuming I knew how to ‘define’ interactivity, however, as the author started giving counter examples of what’s not interactive, like the fridge and the books, I began to reflect on whether I really ‘know’ how to define interactivity or do I just recognize interactivity, because knowing is very different from recognizing; the former is active and genuine understanding and the latter is passive and intuitive/ shallow understanding. Throughout the text, I was just in this cycle between contemplation and realization.
On one hand, I strongly resonated with Crawford’s metaphor of interactivity as a ‘conversation’ between the user and computer, because indeed, that’s the traits I find in successful interactive art works; the art ‘speaks’ to you, ‘listens’ to your reaction, process them and then in response, speak to you again. However, on the other hand, when he began talking about user-interface designers and graphic designers, I grew confused and began to question what he meant by integrating “form with function”. I thought of it in 2 ways: first, the shallow way, in which by function he means literal computer function where the “thinking” is supposed to happen, like in AI; second, perhaps he means every ‘form’/ ‘visual design’ is supposed to be functional in a way that contributes to the interaction. Both ways of thinking feel a bit weird, in the sense that I don’t know if artworks should ‘think’, but perhaps he wasn’t talking about art works, and I just automatically assumed so because of my experiences with art works. It would make a lot more sense if he addressed, perhaps designers, than artists, but again, artists can be designers. Overall, I think I learned a lot in terms of expanding my view on the topic of interactivity and what it really means to make my works interactive, whether as a designer or an artist.