Reflection

Looking back at the process thus far, I felt like I am a little more competent compared to the first day of class. I never expected I could make these programs that can interact with the audience. In many ways, Max is an interactive piece in its own right. So, for every action or a combination, there is a reaction. This is a fundamental part of the interactive art, then it requires the audience to participate in the art piece. Finally become a complete work.

Compared with previous works, <Take Me Home>, <Up or Down> and <Save The Snow White> has become a lot more fine-tuned than what it was at the beginning of this semester. If you asked me to create a product at the beginning of this semester, I don’t know where to start and not even a clue. So, the most important factor that affects me is that when you are nor inspired, just have a look at what other people have made through the google drive. When I find some interesting inspiration in class every time, I know this is a chance for me to create a new product. Now I feel as if I can truly create something of my own.

The thing that encourages me most this time was that many of my classmates were influenced by the program I had done before and improved on it to do more interesting interacted art. Thus, when I start to improve others’ product, I realized that it is very important for the audience to interact with my product an I need them to participate in my product like playing a game. In the beginning, I was impressed with Amy’s product because it looks like a chase game, it’s really fun. Then, I put a maze image to set a background for the work which is you need to find a right route to go home, and then I had set an effect with is when the green monster catch you and these two images will jump back to start and a ‘boom’ image will come out, which means you failed. So, I named it <Take Me Home>, under the background music, I hope that the audience can enjoy this little game. Same with this product, <Up or Down> is based on our group work which is manipulating the size of the voice to control the change of the emoji face. My inspiration comes from Amy’ work that is not being hit by apples. So, I have an idea about protecting balloons or attacking balloons. I still use voice system to control nail fall and then I use ‘down’ key to let the nail go up. Finally, my interacted art presents a game which needs two people to play. <Save The Snow White> is based on my own previous product, so I use Amy’s work and Rachel’s work to improve it. The audience needs to find that apple which can be controlled by voice and then you need to let the apple to the snow white’s hand. At the same time, you need to avoid other apples. Actually, my original idea is that the special apple also can move around with other apples and then the audience needs to clap hands or make some noise to find the special apple. I think this is more interesting and more difficult for participants. But I tried my best several times and the effect was not successful. So, without Camille’s help, my work is still not perfect. But it’s better than the beginning of the semester because I’m going to take the initiative to try out some skills and get inspiration from other students. I was very serious about our three studies and gave them a lovely name. Once again, during this design process, I have realized that keeping the audience in an interactive state it can create for genuinely engaging interaction with the art. By this way, the presentation of the art should be simplistic enough for the audience to understand the idea of the art and what it makes them feel. We all know behind the hood of each presentation, are some different stories.

At the end of this semester, I believe that I can improve my work to achieve a more proficient effect on Max. The few ways that I have been trying to improve Max, besides always asking Camille for help, was looking at tutorials on YouTube. There are lots of valuable information and skills out there on the platform and there are also a lot of people using Max creatively as well. It is a great source of information that I can take inspiration from and learn unique or fundamental functions in Max. Compared with the beginning of my lack of understanding of Max and the limited knowledge of interactive art, I feel that I have come a long way and I am very much pleased. Every task I created made me feel like an interactive artist, this incline of skill is very much evident from my first creation to the study 8. Overall, I am very satisfied with this semester’s understanding and experience of Max, and I hope I will not give up using it in the future.