SASKIA KOSTIC

Saskia’s project stood out the most to me as I love traveling and being able to navigate and experience Europe through her project was very interesting. Through her project I have learnt different elements of interactive art that I hope I can incorporate into my work in the future. I would like to explore further and learn how to assign messages to parts if the photo as how she did with the map. I enjoyed her use of different media elements such as still images (the map) as well as videos (to show the footages of the city you clicked on). She successfully created a tactile piece that from an audience point of view was exciting to experience.

SAGE ESCOTT

Sage’s piece was an on screen piano keyboard that in order to play it you had to use the mouse and click on the key. I personally felt that it was a bit awkward to be playing a piano with a mouse however the end product was still fun to play around with. However I feel that figuring out a way to play it using the keyboard on the computer would be a more natural way to interact with the piece such as assigning alphabets on the keyboard to particularly keys.

CHARMAINE LEE

Charmaine successfully achieved a very visually aesthetic piece. I appreciated her effort in compiling all the photos and assigning them to each key as that is something I still struggle with, on Max8. I liked her work because even tho she was the ‘artist’, her interactive art piece gave the audience a chance to be the artist and being in control of which photos/illustrations are presented on the screen by choosing which key to press. However I would have liked to see a reset button as after spamming the keys a couple times I wanted to rest the screen and continue.

 

REFLECTION

The past three weeks of being exposed to this new software (Max8) has been very eye opening and fun (although we don’t make it sound that way in class but it is -when we get it). I personally feel like being introduced to a new software is always very confusing and scary at first because everything is so unfamiliar at the beginning however the process of learning what we know now about the software, I personally feel was made more comprehensible and fun to explore through to Camille’s patience and teaching style creating a classroom where we were not afraid to ask for help when we did not understand as well as his ability to read all out confused and brain fried facial expressions that tells it all.

For my solo project, I decided to work and develop on the basic elements of Max8 software that I have learned over the past few weeks in class to solely have a better understanding of what was taught as well as “getting it” in the first assessment rather than adding a bunch of cool things and connecting them but not actually understanding what it’s meaning and purpose of the effect and its contribution to the project. Creating a webcam on Max8 was the first exercise that was carried out in class – the excitement that I felt when I first managed to connect all the elements correctly was a feeling I wanted to carried forward to my first assessment. The first mode of interaction that the audience would have with my project is seeing themselves on the screen therefore that excitement to continue interacting with the piece was important to me. The next element that I incorporated into the piece is audio. In my tactile interactive art piece there is screeching high pitch noise that is triggered when moving the curser of the mousepad to a certain area of the screen. This is again involves the feeling of the audience and making them use the senses that we have as humans to engage and interact with pieces that I attempted to create. Combining these two senses together I intended the screeching high pitch to represent the stretch and pull that can be seen on the screen as the resolution decreases and it starts to distort the webcam – this is to create that atmosphere of distortion and stretch of the webcam by feeling the screeching high pitch noise whilst watching the act of it happening.

As for the group project, we decided to create a responsive tactile keyboard that each key carries a vocal recording of it’s respective phonetics. Inspired by a sampler like drum pad we wanted to experiment a little further by allowing the participants to create words by typing them out and hearing a different pronunciation of the word based on its phonetics. Breaking down each word to it’s alphabets individual spelling was an interesting experiment as there were a balance of words that sounded “correct” as well as a handful that sounded a little not like what it was supposed to be. Our aim for this piece was for audiences to take away the importance of communication and how breaking down everyday words can become a discovery into a new sort of artwork. We had fun in the process and having a sense of humour whilst testing out some inappropriate words.

Overall,  reflecting on both the assessments and the first quarter of the semester, it has expanded my knowledge on interactive art and one main thing that I am learning from this whole process is the importance of creating something that has meaning and a purpose – not only to the artists but being able to project and present that to the audience. It is so interesting how through the software, I learnt that everything connects through the communication of messages/objects other elements that you can add – and how important it is to actually understand what input/output/effect you’re connecting it to, weather it is the right one and understanding the purpose of each connection and bridge in your process.

 

ARTIST STATEMENT GROUP (JAKE, KEBBY, JENNA, SAM)

As a group, we were all extremely interested in creating a project that explores the medium of sound. The keyboard was also incorporated as a platform for immediate tactile feedback. We recorded and dissected individual alphabets to its most primitive pronunciation, which was almost baby-like. For example, the letter ‘B’ was recorded as “Bah”, P as “Puh”, and E as “Ehh”. After creating patches in Max8 to trigger each letter’s sound with its respective key, we made a textbox which is the only thing onscreen when the “Presentation” mode is on. Participants are invited to type out any word they wish, which results in an entirely new concoction of sounds. By turning everyday words into unfamiliar and abstract sounds, it evokes the participant to reflect on the importance of communication. It also provides an amusing interpretation of abbreviations such as “LOL” and “LMAO” that are not uncommon in text messages. ­ As a group, we had to use the “key” and “message” patches to figure out each key’s specific number. Another challenge we had to overcome was figuring out the patches required for bridging the keyboard to the individual triggers for the sounds in our playlist. Not only that, we had to create a box to display any text input simultaneously as the participants type their word out. Initially, we wanted to have a separate input for the “Enter” key to playback the entire word but felt that it was too complex for the time being. Perhaps we might incorporate that into future projects.

ARTIST STATEMENT SOLO

Inspired by the interactive art piece that I chose to write my first blogpost of this studio on that focused mainly on the senses of the audience – creating the atmosphere that requires the audience to use that senses to interact with the piece. Hearing (the sound of droplets) and seeing (the rain droplets). For my solo project I decided to take what I learned from the research I had done and incorporate it into this project with the little skillset and knowledge that I have with Max8 and using the basics that we’ve learned over the past 3 weeks as the foundation of this project (with help from Camille). It is known that the brain can hear faster than it can see therefore I wanted to combine these two elements to my project (ie. the audience can feel the distortion + decreasing level of resolution of the screen – with the high pitch audio to guide the eyes). As this is the basic of basics for interactive art, what I feel would develop this project further would be to experiment adding something physical  (ambience/surrounding) that would contribute to the audience experience. Expected challenges that were faced throughout this process was understanding the use and significance of messages/ objects/ numbers/ inputs/ outputs that were needed to string the project together as this software is very new to me.

 

Random International is a collective that was founded by 3 contemporary artist Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood in 2005. They’re known for their distinctive approach to digital based contemporary art that often reqires audience participation in order for the installations to come alive.

One of their pieces that I admire and would lie to explore more to incorporate some of the elements in my future projects in their “Rain Room” that was exhibited at the Barbican in London 2012. The Rain Room exhibits a perpetual rain shower that allows visitors to feel the moisture in the the air surrounding them whilst being able to to hear the sound of rain however remaining untouched by the drops of water.

What I find fascinating about this next level interaction between digital technology and audience participation, is the fact that the audiences interaction becomes so significant due to the fact that the rainfall responds to the reaction and movement of the audience (this is carried out through motorised mirrors with sensors that register the movement and controls the rainfall) – thus, the audience some what becomes a subject of the artwork rather than just a third party viewer.