Week 1 - What is Interactive Art?
For the first week of class, we began to set the foundation of what interactive art actually is.
There is a difference between "reactive art" and "interactive art".
Reactive art can be defined based on its ability to respond to an input.
Interactive art is a reactive art that creates a conversation between the art and the viewer. The viewer's interaction changes the work.
Following the discussion of what interactive art is defined by, we discussed inputs and outputs. An input is any form of information that can go into an a system, while an output is any form of information that can be sent out from a system.
Some examples of inputs are:
- Mouse/Keyboard/Human Interface Device (HID)
- Buttons/Switches
- Body
- Voice
- Breathing
- Movement
- Color
- Light
- Distance
- Pressure
- Weight
Essentially types of inputs are limitless, which is also the case for outputs. However, outputs can be a bit more defined into groups.
Some examples of outputs are:
- Screen/projector
- Laser
- Digital Multiplex
- Sound
- Water
- Motors
- Light
- Anything electrical
After the discussions, we got to play around with the microcontrollers for a while. Using Arduino IDE, we used coding examples for the Adafruit Circuit Playground. We explored different things the microcontroller could do and the tools in Arduino. The following video shows the Serial Plotter tool:
After Thursday's class, I was very excited to come up with ideas for Project 1. I initially had some interesting ideas on something to do with the microcontrollers, but I wasn't sure how interesting they were as artwork. Then I started to feel unsure about my ideas, until I saw my note from class that I even highlighted "Don't filter". I reminded myself to just put stuff down and as of right now, I have 16 out of the 25 sketches I need by class on Tuesday. I really have no idea what I am going to do because all of the ideas are very different. However, that makes me feel better because most of them aren't very fleshed out. I look forward to hearing feedback from my peers to figure out the best of my ideas and where they could go.
