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.