SOLO STUDY

To reach enough interactions with the audiences, I encourage the audiences to control the element of sounds and combing with the video. The video looks like a game playing, it might easier to add sounds and attract people to join in.

The choice of sounds playing and the usage of keyboard to make sound choice are keys to connect the product itself with audiences. Each person will create a different product because of the different sound combinations. ‘Art becomes interactive when audience participation is an integral part of the artwork. Audience behavior can cause the artwork itself to change.’ (Edmonds)

Thanks for Camille’s help, I developed the skill of using keyboard of Max and this is the most difficult part that confused me. Fortunately, the product is almost the same as what I expected. However, the project still has room for improvement, for example, I look forward to adding the elements of images and live video recording and studying how to combine them with the video and sound effects. At the same time, it is also a good idea to let the viewers record their own sounds and add them to the video, which will make the audiences more engage in it.

 

GROUP STUDY

Our group chooses ‘water’ as the clue to explore the sound effects and videos. Two scenes of videos are provided, and it is free for viewers to choose which one to play. The first video is about protecting marine life and the second is about the relation between people and the sea. It is encouraging viewers to add sound to the video, control the volumes of background music and special effect sounds. The different completed videos will be presented because of each person’s choice and match of sound.

The fundamental work is to edit the water-related part of the movie into a coherent short film. Suitable background music is necessary to match videos, the plenty of special effect sounds needed to provide as well so that the audiences have enough choices.

The hardest part is to control multiple soundtracks. Only when audiences have multiple choices at the same time, they will be more interested in the work. However, it is still not a perfect work and what we expected is to add the live recording of videos and sounds into videos or change the screen filters to get more interactions with the audiences.

 

REFLECTION

According to the creative process, it is a good idea to develop brainstorm based on the existing work. Existing works will present useful ideas for creative research. For example, the research exercise in week one is a great opportunity to let us know more about interactive works and be a platform to develop more ideas for the assignment. To ask myself ‘what I am interested in, what concepts can get interactions’ is helpful for open mind.

Interactive is a necessary concept in the media artifact because it is a kind of communication that connect the artist and audiences. For the creative process, ‘how to get interactions with audiences’ is the primary problem. Since we perceive the world using multiple senses, immersion is often associated with the high pervasiveness and fidelity of multisensory inputs, such as visual, auditory, and tactile cues. (Striner, Azad & Martens 2018) The best experience of interaction is to active audiences’ senses to join in the process of creating the work, let them become one of the creators of the product so that makes a sense of creativity and achievement.

During the process of techniques of interactive art making, I really get further inspiration about it:

1) Interactive art is the result that combines multiple media platforms and tools. It is important for artists to fully use the huge number of media and online resources, for example, YouTube, Adobe Premier and multiple channels for searching variety kinds of sound are what I did in the process.

2) Set yourself as a viewer might be a great idea to develop interactive art. The possibility of creating a user-generated experience as much as possible is the focus of the studio and Brockmyer (2009) and Cummings (2016) suggest that engagement is often created through a sense of presence, the sense of ‘being there,’ surrounded by a person’s attention and perception. In the process of making the work, I always ask myself, ‘Will this product interests me when I first see it? How long will I be immersed in this work? What aspects will attract audiences?’

3) For the group study, teamwork is so important. Everyone has aspects that are good at and good cooperation could save much time and bring new ideas. Cindy is good at using Premier, so editing videos is not a hard work for her, Wenping and Chloe are good at searching and summing up and I am good at making brainstorm. As we played our respective abilities, to explore the structure of the work by using the Max program is pretty easier.

The successful aspect of my work is to fully combine audio and video into the solo study and group work. These two works are both about to add multiple sounds into videos to encourage audiences creating their own products. The solo study is more like a game that can be played by audiences of all ages because the animation screen cannot only attract children but also encourage adults to join. The combination of two keyboards (digital keyboard on the screen and real keyboard on laptop) is the part that most satisfied me! I spent so much time to make them works because it would make audiences have more sense of engagement by tactile sense. For group work, the usage of multiple special sound effects is the most successful. When two or more channels are playing simultaneously with the video, it will show a completely different feeling.

However, my product has great potential for improvement in both concept and technology. Audio and video are two key elements I used, in the future, I would like to add some live recording to promote the theme of interaction, such as record videos by the camera on the laptop and change the filters or record audiences’ own voices. It is challenging work, but I believe it would gain more engagement with audiences. I hope that through the tutorial study and further research, these problems can be solved and let products become more interactive.

 

References:

Brockmyer, J B 2009. ‘The development of the Game Engagement Questionnaire: A measure of engagement in video game-playing’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 45, no. 4, p. 624–634.

Cummings, J J 2016, ‘How immersive is enough? A meta-analysis of the effect of immersive technology on user presence’, Media Psychology, vol. 19, no. 2, p. 272–309.

E, Edmonds,‘Interactive Art’, PDF page 1, viewed 18 March 2019.

<https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e245/df020ff7f8b8a99750f8c9c4f70f4db7971a.pdf>

Striner, A, Azad, S & Martens, C 2018, ‘A Common Framework for Audience Interactivity’, viewed 18 March 2019, <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.03320.pdf>