An interesting start to the semester!

Already 4 weeks in and I have learnt more words in Max 7 than I did in year 7 French Class. Even though there was a lot to cover, Max 7, when used correctly, gives us the opportunity to physically put our ideas into action. The start of the interactive was a good chance for us to understand and learn a thing or two about the world of interactive media. Personally I have had little to none knowledge of interactive art.

During the first two weeks of the subject we were sent off to research on a particular interactive artist. Considering that I had no idea on who to choose, I quickly dived into Google and searched on the top ten interactive artists. This is what I have found:

I had a brief look at most of them and they were all interesting in their respective ways. Most of these artists were able to send some kind of statement to their audience through their works which ranged from politics to human behaviour. One artist that really intrigued me was Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who I eventually chose to study and present his works to the class for the first assignment. Observing his incredible instalments which included “Pan Anthem”  and “Tape Recorder” really caught my attentions and drew me towards the world of interactive art. His instalments were very simple but sent out a strong message to his audience.  And this inspired me to create my own art in this manner as I feel as though this is reflective of my own personality and artistic tastes. Another source of inspiration was Yoko Ono’s work called “A Box of Smile” which was discussed in class. Like many of Lozano-Hemmer’s work Ono’s idea was so simple but was able to effectively interact with her audience. As the user opens the box and sees their own reflection, they can not help but smile. The idea is very witty and fun, and it would be nice, for myself, to be able to send a positive message to my audience as they experience my piece of interactive art.

After researching into Lozano-Hemmer’s work as well as other interactive artists, I began to have a better understanding of what interactive is designed to do. How I interpret the purpose behind interactive art is the ability to communicate a message by having the audience engaging with the work in order to bring it to life. The interaction of the audience and their response is the art piece itself. I think that interactive art is a powerful way of sending a message because the audience is able to experience a feeling by being apart of the art. It allows for the artist to send a message that is packaged in away for an individual to understand and gain perspective on a particular matter.

Once the class had a better understanding of interactive art, we were able to develop ideas for 3 different interactive pieces. Once we had developed a few ideas we had to integrate them into Max 7 in order to bring the ideas to life.  My first idea was a word generator that produced a series of random words that derived from different categories of words. The audience would then construct a sentence using the random words provided by the generator, which is then written in a dedicated space. No one person will construct the same sentence and it will be interesting to see the variety of sentences constructed by each unique individual. The second study was based off controversial issues relating to politics and humanities. The study was designed to record the initial reaction of the user, which was immediately played after in a loop once they have seen the controversial image for a few seconds. This study was designed to observe the impact between people and controversial imagery. Considering that everyone has a different set of morals and beliefs, not everyone will react a certain way. What may be controversial to a lot of people can be normal to one person. The third study was more superficial in terms of its purpose in comparison to the first two studies. This study was a distorted live self portrait video of the user, which can be manipulated by the loudness of the user. This study was more concerned with aesthetics than being thought provoking. It was just a fun idea and a good learning exercise in understanding the language used in Max 7.

Overall it was a good start to the semester. I look forward to learning more interesting set ups used in Max 7 so I could produce different type of interactive art. Right now I am limited to basic distortion of live feeds and recording sounds.

Audio Visual Manipulator:

This piece of work was not designed to be thought provoking as the first two studies. However one could argue that the way the user interacts with the art can say a lot of things about themselves. The purpose of this study was to have the user be able to manipulate their live self portrait image using sound and generated data. The user can manipulate the live video with the loudness of their voice which will create big distortions of the image. The image is also automatically distorted by the sliders. This can be changed by the creator but for now the user can only distort the image through the loudness of their voice. When I have more time, I guess the next step from audio distortion would be distortion by the position of the subject moving. Another possibility could be distortion by the placement of the mouse. There are plenty of ways a user could manipulate their self-portraits by either moving them selves or a different object and even talking in a different way.

Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jVWMRDBTfEzY8KOr3Sq06u6umRHHFErm

Controversy

In our brain storming session our group of young minds conceptualised an art piece that would combine visuals and controversial topics. The main idea was to see how the user would self reflect after observing their initial reaction on a particular image that contained controversial content. The patch itself contained an image with three toggles that reveal 3 different controversial images that relate to politics, race and animal cruelty. When the user toggles for an image, an image will appear for a few seconds. This toggle automatically turns on the webcam and starts to record the reaction of the user. After a few seconds the image goes back to a blank frame and will see a playback loop of the few seconds that was recorded. Having the user spend a brief moment of time looking at their reaction is designed to provoke some kind of thought. There is no obvious answer on how the user will respond to the looped reaction footage, but hopefully it will trigger thought provoking ideas on the issue and their own morals and beliefs. The initial reaction is a very natural and candid response, which will be interesting to see how users will respond.

Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aNeXOj8sIVNKhAhEj-li1yKTmIx0CVCc

Word Generator:

I had a tough time building my word generator together. The concept was a lot more advanced in the language of Max 7. Since I failed to have the program working, I shall attempt to explain my thought process on how it would work. Influenced by interactive artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, I conceptualised the idea of generating a set of random words from each category of word (nouns, pronoun, verbs etc). This idea was inspired by Rafael because his art works have used logistics to understand human nature. The words will be selected from a database embedded in the patch which comes from all the words in the dictionary which are categorised in their respective grammatical classifications by a click a button. Once the user clicks the button, a series of words for each category are randomly generated. Here the user interacts with the art and is free to construct the desired sentence using the words provided by the generator. The written sentence will in a space where other users will write their own sentences as well. From the types of sentences constructed by the users, we can interpret the information in a variety of ways. We can grab a slight sense of mood the user was to the level of their literacy ability.

link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aFNTlAHPZqapUTXtQjF_hOwiSwMtTU4L