Installations often involve the use of controllers. Examples include the manual hand crank of Marchel Duchamp's Rotary Glass Plates, a Playstation 3 controller and the in-game interface of the game Flower by Thatgamecompany, and the load cell sensors that power Art+Com's Duality.
What are some common examples of controllers?
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Motion controllers (video/ultrasonic)
Now that we have explored an example interactive arts installation and the piloting process that occured, let's examine installations a little more specifically. Iterative arts is a term that is roughly applied to generative and/or responsive arts experiences that require direct user interaction with arts objects to realize the works. For an interesting discussion about interactive arts installation, see this talk by Golan Levin. Many interactive arts objects involve a controller and/or input device (a topic we will explore more fully below). These controllers/input devices can be accessed individually (ex. in the form of apps like Bloom by Eno & Chilvers or Radiohead & Universal Everything's Polyfauna) or they are installed within specific places for users to interact with.
The creation of interactive arts works involve interdisciplinary thinking. The final works often incorporate aspects of visual arts, music/sound design, engineering, coding, architecture, etc. They also require creators to not only think about the expressive elements of their work, but also the user-end experiences. This consideration of the users allows the creators to enter into revision through reflective dialogue with the users, co-creators, and their arts products (Birringer, 2008).
In moving forward, it might be useful to consider the following guiding questions for the remainder of this presentation:
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What place could creating interactive installations have in your classroom?
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In what ways do controllers mediate musical experiences? (Birringer, 2005; Tobias, In Press)
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How can pilot-testing be empowered in the classroom as a tool for revision and dialogue? (Birringer, 2005; Höök, Sengers, & Andersson, 2003; Morrison, Mitchell, & Brereton, 2007)
In this section we will discuss:
Controllers
/installations
Let's take a look at some iterative arts installations. First of all, what's going on in this installation? How is the controller that powers this installation mediating the musical and social aspects of this experience?
Installations
As we seek to answer the first guiding question, we need to consider a platform that students of varying ability levels can use to craft their own interactive arts objects. Scratch is a coding language, graphic interface, and online community created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab. Take a look at the Scratch project embedded below. It makes use of the camera function of your computer (and flash, so no iProducts). You may need to "allow" flash to access your camera. Be aware that this is a work in progress and not all features have sound components yet. Consider how a project like this might function in your classroom and in the lives of the students you work with.
Scratch
Now, peruse the curated playlist below. Consider the following questions as you think about these installations:
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In what ways do installation controllers mediate musical experience?
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What creative decisions are apparent?
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What design decisions are apparent?
Before we dive in and make our own Scratch-powered installation controllers, let's consider a few important notions found in interactive arts literature:
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Potential: Creators of installations plan for potential engagement (Birringer, 2005).
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Context: Creators should consider the ways that their works and the settings come together to create a unique context (Birringer, 2005). "One could argue that an interactive installation inevitably sets up both a social-interactive and a theatricalized context, since the visitor who enters an installation, marked as an artwork, enters an extraordinary space outside of the conventional everyday context, and she will to some extent behave according to the rules of heightened self-consciousness that apply in aesthetic contexts" (p. 158).
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Control/Predict: Creators are influences and not dictators of experiences (Höök, Sengers, & Andersson, 2003). The system cannot truly be "controlled" as other static works are controlled by the creator. Instead, the creators must base their design choices for a system in a way that balances "on a thin line between being predictable and controllable and thereby boring and not achieving its purpose, and being unpredictable and uncontrollable and thereby alienating its users, making them feel stupid and out of control entirely" (p. 243).
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Open Systems: Installations are open systems, open to a range of experiences, meanings, and level of participation (Morrison, Mitchell, & Brereton, 2007). "The works need not necessarily be made with the idea of eliciting one homogeneous experience, but rather a range of experiences. For it is not expected that an artwork will need to please everybody, or that the artist will have set out to achieve this" (p. 9). Birringer (2008) notes that creators of installations are "aiming at an active ‘user’ who experiences, not a static completed work, but an intelligent, responsive environment or a self-organizing system" (p. 147).
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Useable Systems: Nielsen (1993) suggests that useable systems are: 1) easy to learn and remember, 2) forgiving of errors by the users, and 3) pleasant to use. Also, we must consider that user frustration with a system often results from apparent lack of control (Höök, Sengers, & Andersson, 2003). So, how can we design something that can be controlled to some extent, but also make it open enough that each user experiences something new and unique?
Create
