I learned more about Max in this assignment. I find it easy to use this software, as long as you spend time on it and is willing to learn it. In the creative process, I learnt a lot. As I worked on study 6, I found it important to reflect on the work of others. Keep the merits of other people’s work, and at the same time, improve the weaknesses of their work to make it more interesting and attractive. My study 6 is based on the Amy’s study, when I create my work, I have to learn about what element she used and how to use that element. Through this creative process, I learned a lot about the skills and techniques that I never learnt before, it has exercised my ability of creating, let me recognize the importance of the reflection in the creation. Besides, I think it is also important to reflect on my previous works. Because reflecting on the previous work may give me new ideas so that I can create better and more surprising works. Before I make the study 8, I think a lot about my previous work. I want to make the sound project better. I do not want to only use boring lines to show our sound. Them I decided to make our sound can used to build some buildings. Finally, I succeed and make a game which is using sound to control the buildings can be built on the screen. So rebuilding my previous work is not a bad thing, it helps me think differently, create differently, encourage myself to challenge and demonstrate my skills for improvement.

When I finished these three works, I found there are a lot techniques can be used to make interactive art. As a good interactive art, it may not need very flexible techniques to support it and it only can encourage people to join in and thinking about it. As this time’s requirement is sustained interaction, the project needs users focus on 5-7 minutes, thus I wondered in which way can make people sustainedly focus on and enjoy my work. I think the best technique I have learned is voice control. This technique is well reflected in my study 7, which using sound to control whether the building is built or not. I think users are happy when they experience my game. When they use their voice to build a building, they must be happy and have a sense of achievement.

Compared with my previous works, I think all three works are excellent this time. It is not mean that I did not work hard on my previous works, but I really like my three works this time and they are really can interact with people. I have to admit that they are very interesting and attractive. In addition, I was no longer completely dependent on the teacher this time, and I tried to complete my study by myself without the help of the teacher. My study 8 is a sound mixer similar to b-box, which sounds cool, but actually is not complicated. I used online tutorials to learn how to make a sound mixer, which eventually worked, to my desired effect. I think the most successful thing for me is not how excellent my works are, but my ability to learn independently and solve difficulties without escaping. More importantly, these three works proved my ability to create interactive art. I’m proud of myself.

For these three works, I believe I have some improvements, but there are still some parts I can improve. When I created my study 7, I could feel my weakness in operation, and I lacked technical knowledge. These difficulties forced me to turn to my teacher Camille for help. Although we finally solved the problem of the sensitivity of sound recognition of the computer , but the problem of my program loop was not well solved. In the end, I could only make a simple button and put a message next to it to let the user to manually restart the game. Camille told me that if you can’t get your computer to work well with you, you can think of ways for users to make up for your work. I think this point is very correct, and I will remember and apply it to my future creations.

I want to explore the music project. I have never explored the aspect of music in this software before. So I had no idea where to start. I started looking for tutorials online, and after watching many of them, I finally got the idea and started making it. I gave up the idea because there were many students who had made production about piano before. So I’m going to make a sound mixer, which sound mixer sounds like a b-box. I found some interesting audios in Max’s sound library and put them into my work. I used two elements Stereo and CYCLR to realise my idea. For the CYCLR part, people can change the speed to make the sound listened differently. I think it is pretty interesting. I tried to put in more music to get better results, but I failed. Because it’s hard to find music that sounds very harmonious. Eventually I gave up on the idea and chose four harmonious music’s for mixing, which sounded good.

Study 7 must take an idea, concept, or technique used in a previous study, and develop it further. So, I wanted to develop my previous ideas about sound. In the previous work, I wanted to shape the sound. So people can see their voices on the screen. In the previous work, I just used a variety of lines and the color changes of the lines to show the changes of the sound. Maybe it’s a little boring. So in the new work, I wanted to make it more interesting to interact with people. My idea is that people can talk, and when they have a certain level of voice, the building is going to go up, and up, and down, until the whole building is built. But on a technical level, I had some problems. I turned on the building floor switch and used sound to control it, but the switch didn’t seem to be sensitive enough to make it difficult to build the building. Cammille tried a lot of times for this problem in class, but it could not be solved. I did know what can I do to make this better. So in the end, I have to change a little. The final one is when you clap your hand, the building can be built one floor by one floor. Maybe this one is not good, but I already tried my best to do it.

In the study 6, we must discuss and reflect on the work of another student in class. When I experience all of my classmates’ work in class, I like Amy’s work best. In her homework, you only need to use four different keyboards, up and down, left and right, to control the movement of characters, so that you can avoid the pursuit of monsters behind you. It’s a simple game, but it’s really fascinating. So I made some changes based on hers. I changed the background into a maze. I think that’s going to give people a much clearer sense of purpose when they are experiencing the game. At the same time, I wanted people to be able to change the speed of the character’s movement by changing the height of the voice. When I was exploring how to use the change of voice level to control the movement speed of the task, I encountered some problems. I could not find a particularly suitable variable, that is, when the variable reached that point, the movement speed of the character would change. Eventually, with the help of the teacher Cammille, the problem could be solved better.

Think about what I learn about the creative process, the most important thing I improved is my creativity. To find out some inspiration, tutor asked us to the MoMA to see someone else’s production. My inspiration of major project is on the basis of the “shadow monsters” that I saw in the MoMA. Also, listening to others’ advice is also a very important step during my creative process. In my major project, I used only wave to express the sound at first. But Carrie told me that it was a little bit boring by using only wave. She said that I can change the line of the X-axis and Y-axis to make the shape of the line much more interesting. Moreover, the inspiration happens randomly, it’s very important to record them. For the study 4 and study 5, the inspiration is from a video on the Tiktok. We want to focus on the face recognition technology in our study 4 and 5. I am very happy to learn how to use facial recognition technology with the help of our tutor. In addition, I learned to watch some tutorials on YouTube to learn some of the application of elements to make our work better.

Because this study requires us to do non-tactile interactions. We think a lot of ideas. Finally, we decided to use face recognition technology. Through the study of four and five, I know how to interact with people without tactile. In the trip of ACMI and MoMA, I found non-tactile interactions also can give people a feeling of happy and interesting. The “shadow monsters” is using the technique of projection and recognition, fusing the technology and fun to express the interesting and happy feeling for users. Perhaps this non-tactile interactive art looks simple, but it can bring fun to the user. So simplicity does not affect the experience of the work for users. There is another work that impressed me. It is a building model that makes a sound. When you approach the model, you will hear the sound of ‘Help me’. This will cause the curiosity of every passagers, for example, who made the sound, where it sounded. Perhaps this is the charm of non-tactile interactive art works. So far, I have explored a lot of new technologies in Max (face recognition technology, through the variables to control the sound and use the volume of the sound to control the changes in the line). Through these research, I found that the simpler, the easier it is for users to engage in our work.

So far within the Max, my ability to apply its technology is constantly improving. I can not use MAX well at first. I need my teacher to guide me through every operation. This situation is getting better now. In this process of progress, the teacher’s help is indispensable, at the same time, the tutorial on youtube is also very useful. In general, I am proud of my efforts. In the creative part, I think my success is not to rely on tactile interactions, but to start using non-tactile interactions, using facial recognition technology, voice tools and other tools to make our work into a new interaction artistic area. Something that was helpful during the development with these new and more complicated functions was the ability to work in smalls groups and feed off each other’s knowledge and skill levels. Every member of our group has its own strengths, and we are happy that we can help each other so that our work can be better. I think my personal project is very interesting because I know that many people in my class use face recognition technology. I want to do something different from others, so I chose the sound to control it in the end instead of face recognition technology.

Finally, I think I still have a lot thing to improve, such as the use of Max technology needs to improve, and imagination and creativity can be richer and better. Next, I want to talk about our group project. In the study 4 and study 5, maybe we can add more elements in our work instead of a single piece of music, for example some videos and some pictures. Through this, our work may be more interesting. In my personal work, maybe I can think of something new to make my work more distinctive and more interesting. Now my work may be too simple, I just want people to see the changes in their voices in my major project, but the choice of the way to express the change in sound may be too monotonous and boring. Thus, those problems remind me that in the future I have to improve my skills on MAX and try to facing problems rather than simplifying problems, moreover I have to do more by myself research and exploration of how to create the work rather than only ask for help from my tutor! As the problem of the weakness on expression, I do believe with my improvements, my work can bring more intuitive and beautiful effects on both visual and mind in the project in the future.

Study 5 is actually a study that is improved on the basis of study 4. We didn’t have a lot of ideas at the beginning. So we asked our classmates for some suggestions. Most of them thought that we should do some changes on the part of face recognition. We can not only use the distance between the screen and people’s face. We may be able to control the music by using the movements of other organs on the face or even the movements of the body. At the beginning, we thought about whether some slight movements of the face could smoothly control the music. But in the end we found that some facial movements were too small and soft, at the same time, everyone was able to make their facial organs move differently. For example, we want to use the movement of eyebrows to control the music, but the degree of eyebrow movement of each person is very different, so it is difficult to achieve the results we expected. Finally, we changed our mind and chose the movement of the hand to control the music. The change of the choice of the movement had a good effect on our work.

We also have improvements on the techniques’ detail. With our tutor’s help, based on the change before, we still keep observing the data change of the movement to make people have a better experience with our work. Also we added more music in it and people can mix them by their different movement of their body to create their our song.

In the assignment 3, we did not continue to do the research on the Tactile Interaction. We explore the Non-Tactile Interaction in this assignment. This work is supposed to show the emotion of ‘crazy’, which is aim to make people feel crazy when they experience our work. Because this assignment requires people to perform non-tactile interactions, we chose face recognition technology to satisfy. After discussions with the team members, we decided to use both sound and face recognition technology to make people better participate in the experience. In terms of how to combine the two things well, each team member had different ideas about it. But in the end, we all think that it is most appropriate to control the sound playback by the changing of the distance between the body and the screen. The reason why we decided to do like this is that sometimes face recognition is not very sensitive, using some other things to control playback may have a not good effect on people’s experience.

This time we explore a lot and reference a lot other people’s work on the technical level.
We encountered difficulties in setting variables because it was difficult to accurately find the appropriate variables to control the sound playback. Finally, we sought help from the tutor and he solved the problem for us. What’s more, he also help us to reconnect each step and made the work more influent.

I got a lot of things in the creative process, such as a better understanding of creativity and some application of technology. In general, the process of creation is very difficult. I encountered a lot of difficulties in the process of creation. For example, at the beginning, I spent a lot of energy to find the source of inspiration and the technical problems that I could not solve in the process of creating. First of all, let me talk about the aspect of inspiration. Inspiration is not something you want to have. It may appear at any moment, but it is not necessarily specific. It may be just a very small idea. Inspiration usually need to take a long time to think about it and polish it so that this inspiration can grow and become better. Then we can use some skills of techniques to make our inspiration concrete and more attractive. Our studio’s aim is doing this and making our inspiration a reality. In the aspect of technique, this was my first time using a program like MAX, before this I didn’t realize it was possible to create things in coding or visual coding programs, so it has been a really good experience to experiment with different artistic materials and media. I really enjoyed the creative process. We can discuss our ideas with classmates and tutors in class. Some of the other students’ ideas are really interesting. More importantly, the tutor will patiently teach me how to use Max, so that I will not give up my creation easily.

While dealing with interactive art production techniques, I found that some simple technical operations can give users an amazing artistic experience. I have never thought of only changing the color of the background of the video can give the users a unique experience with art. Interactive art provided a good insight into the world of art and how humans function with it. Using max has made me realize the new side of the interactive art world, while interactive art can give users more ways to get to know, understand art and not be bored. Art is intangible, but interactive art makes art tangible, allowing users to experience art and communicate with art. For example, in my third study, I want users to be able to put themselves into different countries without leaving their home. At the same time, users can listen to beautiful music when they watch the video. For this interactive art, I set up a very simple way to use it. The users can switch the background of the video at will by simply tapping on a few simple cases on the keyboard. Although this is simple, it still gives users a different kind of special experience about interactive art. I believe that everyone who comes into contact with interactive art will be deeply impressed by it.
My technology is not so skilled now that it can’t make the user experience perfectly. I hope that I will improve my interactive art technology skills so that users can have a better experience in my programs.

So far in my development with MAX, I think that my creativity has already been reflected in the process of doing assignment 2. Also, I learn some about how to use Max make something. In the process of exploring the effect function of the Max, I began to discover that I had the ability and interest to explore this software. I found this software really makes my inspiration a reality. So that users are immersed in the interactive art I created. In addition, our second study is a group study. In this study, each team member has their own ideas. The most cool thing is that after many discussions, we can combine the highlights of each person’s ideas to make the final interactive art work. Although in the process of creative integration, we have encountered many difficulties. But fortunately, we finally solved it satisfactorily. Overall the three studies, my abilities of creativity, expressing ideas and editing device are gradually improved, it also can be considered as a successful part about my work so far!

For the three works which I have done, all of them have some shortcomings that need to be improved one step further.
But I believe that my ability will increase by more training in the future. I don’t think this is a bad thing, because it means that I have more knowledge to learn in the future. At the same time, I feel that I am lacking in creativity. For these reasons, I did not do my three studies very well. The use of the help and reference windows has also been extremely useful and guiding. I think my third study can be improved so that people feel as they are when they see the video. Its purpose is to enhance the interaction between interactive art and users. Overall, I need to make much effort in many aspects to build my future work better. Enhancing the level of interaction between my work and the user is my top priority.