STUDY 1, 2 & 3 Reflection:
Looking back at the progress thus far, I felt like I am a little more competent compared to the first day of class. I never expected there to be this much programming involved in order for us to design our own conceptual and interactive art pieces. However, in many ways, Max 7 is an interactive piece in its own right. For every action, or a combination of, there is a reaction. This is a fundamental part of interactive art, which requires the audience to participate in the art piece in order for the ‘art’ to be appreciated.
In the beginning, I already had a perceived perception of what interactive art was to me. However, through the creative process of taking inspiration from other artists and designing new interactive projects on Max, I felt that I was very limited in my ability to conceive interactive ideas. It was really helpful to have the opportunity to work as groups and individually in order to enhance the creative experience and have the confidence to formulate new ideas and apply them to Max.
The first few studies were real simple tasks. These were design to familiarise myself with the software. My first study was more conceptual as I did not have the knowledge to translate my idea of a sentence generator into Max. This slowly regressed into more simple ideas such as visual distortions by loudness of sounds or generating reactions through controversial visuals. This simple approach is not also good training wheels for Max but it also goes to show that a simple can be just as effective as a complex idea. As long as the execution of the interactive art is well thought out and concise.
Through other peers and our teacher, I have seen a variety of interesting concepts. This is a valuable experience to witness and participate in. There are so many ways to design interactive art, you would thing that having only five senses would be very limiting to interactive art. Creativity in interactive does play with these senses but also goes beyond that and can serve as a tool to commentate or reflect on human behavior such as politics, emotions and so much more.
I have a big fascination for human psyche, and when it comes to conceptualising a piece of interactive art I am most concerned by the way I want to make the audience feel. I am not too worried about making some kind of big statement but more so provoking some kind of emotion by the tools I use. I think there is a lot of beauty in the way we can be so similar yet so different at the same time.
When I think of interactive art I think of big installments which people can be fully immersed into the art. However given that I am confined to Max, I feel as though the ideas I have in my head are more suited to a big room rather than something on a laptop. However, I just need more time an practice to construct my ideas that are more optimized for Max in order to execute the idea effectively as if it were have the same impact in an installment. So in terms of how successful I feel thus far, I would have to say I have been more unsuccessful in my interactive works. However it will take some time for me to be able to be satisfied with my work.
In terms of what I hope to improve on for the future, I would like to execute really simple but impactful ideas. When I saw Yoko Ono’s Box of Smiles concept in class, I was really impressed by how something so simple was so effective. This is the kind of interactive art I wish to translate through Max. An idea that is less tactile would also be nice as well. Quite possibly something more audio visual next time? There’s so many possibilities but I have to improve my Max skills first before I start thinking of bizarre concepts.
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 plenty of valuable information out there on the platform and there are also a lot of people using Max creatively as well. It is just another great source of information that I can take inspiration from and learn unique or fundamental functions in Max. Max also has a really good user interface for assistance on particular functions as well and how they would work in a certain scenario.
Another small thing, but big at the same time, that I can improve on is the small little refinements I can do my projects. This makes the work look a lot more presentable and make the interactive experience so much better for the audience. This is simply just a poor habit of being lazy and something that can be improved on for the next project to come.