Derechos de cobro cedidos a largo plazo (bursatilizaciones)

With simplicity in interaction in mind, three artist-made interactive artworks are present- ed. I have interacted and tried out — experienced — them myself, so this section is written from a user’s point of view. The works vary from screen-based software programs with graphical / mouse and touchscreen-based user interfaces to interactive installations both in gallery contexts and outside it. The interface may be the door, window, map, visit card and brochure to the interactive work, but it is also the steering wheel, the door handle, and the eye, the ear and the mouth of the work. Many kinds of interfaces do exist in the context of interactive art: natural, innovative, playful, and powerful, even interfaces, which are easy to understand.

The works not only contribute to user knowledge but analysing them gives additional support for the Qualities of Simplicity: searching for repeating features or patterns of simplicity in interactive artefacts has helped to build the Simplicity Framework and the Simplicity Ma- trix. Although the works are made by artists other than me, it is worth noting that I, of course, experience them as an artist or Interaction designer colleague, who has a long knowledge of the field and is able to analyse many things ranging from technical execution to spatial and physical design decisions in the artworks. Through analysis of these works it is possible to come up with new things to consider as an Interaction designer — things such as how to create new experienc- es, how to make things fun, or how to time interactivity in a way that it seems to flow perfectly. Analysing the works from the user point of view extends the designer knowledge. So, in a sense my designer knowledge affects the analysis at least in the background, but the user knowledge and experience should be in focus.

Heidi Tikka: Mother, child

A great example of an interface which cannot be separated from its content can be seen in the interactive installation Mother, Child (Tikka, 2000). I tried it when it was exhibited at

the F2F — New Media Art from Finland —

exhibition at The New Wight Gallery in Los Angeles. In the installation, the participant sits down in a chair, holds a white fabric on his or her lap, after which an image of a newborn baby is projected on the cloth, the baby’s noises surrounding the sitter. A camera motion detection system tracks the movement of the participant sitting — if he or she keeps still or rocks the fabric gently back and forth, the baby sleeps or calms down, but if the par- ticipant is moving very rapidly, the baby gets nervous and starts to cry. The fabric, the chair, the projection, the soundscape, the natural rocking actions to soothe the baby are all fa- miliar actions and create a natural interaction method while also being part of the content of the work. The work is not a simulation of how to be a mother or a father. It is not a game, or just an experiment in interface design or pro- gramming research about video tracking. To be fair, the work does contain all of these ele- ments, but above all the work is an interactive art installation, and interactive art like this can provide insightful ideas for Interaction design research (Edmonds et al., 2004).

The spatial design in the installation is very minimal, all the unnecessary elements are taken away. There is a chair, which allows for sitting down — an often used example when talked about affordances. The fabric affords picking up, holding it in your lap, but also waving it around in the air. The tangibility of the cloth material and the virtual baby create an interesting duality for the work. Familiarity, yes, but alienated. The familiar objects and the behaviour of the baby flirts with the users’ intuition, steering the interactive process forward — perhaps to

Qualities of Simplicity in Designing Interactive Art

the F2F — New Media Art from Finland —

exhibition at The New Wight Gallery in Los Angeles. In the installation, the participant sits down in a chair, holds a white fabric on his or her lap, after which an image of a newborn baby is projected on the cloth, the baby’s noises surrounding the sitter. A camera motion detection system tracks the movement of the participant sitting — if he or she keeps still or rocks the fabric gently back and forth, the baby sleeps or calms down, but if the par- ticipant is moving very rapidly, the baby gets nervous and starts to cry. The fabric, the chair, the projection, the soundscape, the natural rocking actions to soothe the baby are all fa- miliar actions and create a natural interaction method while also being part of the content of the work. The work is not a simulation of how to be a mother or a father. It is not a game, or just an experiment in interface design or pro- gramming research about video tracking. To be fair, the work does contain all of these ele- ments, but above all the work is an interactive art installation, and interactive art like this can provide insightful ideas for Interaction design research (Edmonds et al., 2004).

The spatial design in the installation is very minimal, all the unnecessary elements are taken away. There is a chair, which allows for sitting down — an often used example when talked about affordances. The fabric affords picking up, holding it in your lap, but also waving it around in the air. The tangibility of the cloth material and the virtual baby create an interesting duality for the work. Familiarity, yes, but alienated. The familiar objects and the behaviour of the baby flirts with the users’ intuition, steering the interactive process forward — perhaps to

Picture 10. Heidi Tikka, Mother, Child. Photo © Heidi Tikka

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test the system by moving too rapidly, or trying to find soothing actions, rocking the baby back to sleep. Overall, the work is predictable: it functions as expected and the experience is emo- tional and powerful. Trust is born between the user and the work.

Golan Levin: Yellowtail

Interactive artist Golan Levin’s Yellowtail is a software application, which is used by drawing a white line or a curve on a black background with a mouse (or with a finger as in the currently available iPad and iPhone versions). I have tried the downloadable Java application version and the version for Processing software. Even after reducing the users’ possible actions to a simple line-drawing task, a surprisingly intriguing interactive application is born. The work begins with an empty, black screen, and intuitively one moves the mouse, clicks and draws something. The gesture with which the line is drawn turns into an animation: the line becomes alive and its appearance and animation direction, path, speed and time get their parameters from the way the user drew the line — although the action is mirrored and the drawing starts to move from the original starting point, but backwards in time and space. The users’ drawing action affords the line to loop around the screen slowly or quickly, with sharp or low angles, or by rolling around — with all of this being reversed in time and dislocated in space. It is easy to populate the screen quickly with similar or different kinds of lines, to create fast or slow abstract animations. (Figure 13)

Drawing a line on the screen with either the mouse or the finger is an action we have become very familiar with. There is a small surprise element when the line becomes alive since it starts to grow from the point first drawn and shrink from the point where the mouse was released, reversing the drawn path from end to beginning, yet still producing the same form. However, the methods in which moving lines are born and created are easy to understand and this tangibility opens up possibilities to play with the screen space, test different line behaviour, different speeds, rhythms, styles, shapes. The user really becomes the animator, and the work behaves differently each time the work is used, and of course with each user. As the work func- tions well and creates these moving patterns, which can be recognised as very unique, it can

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be trusted by the user, and thus returning to the work and trying out different things becomes pleasurable.

Paul De Marinis in collaboration with Rebecca Cummins:

A Light Rain

This installation was exhibited in front of Kiasma museum in Helsinki, in 2004 during the isea 2004 Symposium of Electronic Art. It is based on Paul De Marinis’ work Rain- Dance / Musica Acuatica (1998), in which “Twenty falling streams of water, modulated with

audio signals, create music and sound when intercepted by visitors’ umbrellas” (DeMarinis, 2004). In other words, the umbrellas become audio speakers: the water stream is encoded with sound information. The falling water has been manipulated using a magnetic field, thus causing different kinds of sounds, notes and melodies. When the water hits the umbrella, which acts as a resonator, music is heard — the falling water stream itself does not make any sounds. In the version exhibited in front of Kiasma, there was also a rainbow visible during sunlight, created with water mist, which invited users to walk into the installation.

The installation sounds technically complex, but for the participant it was extremely simple: to experience it, one needed to use only a regular umbrella. There were umbrellas to borrow next to the installation if you did not happen to carry one with you. The interactive installation clearly plays with our intuition, familiar things and affordances: when there are um- brellas which can be borrowed and a rain & rainbow machine, we want to try it out and do what is natural: open the umbrella and walk under the rain(bow). Again, the user interface (the um- brella) is a crucial element of the artwork. Perhaps in a situation where there was no one around and only the water streaming system was seen it would not be possible to understand what to do, but to see other people try it out was all the instruction one needed. Modulated water be- haves differently than the random sound of water drops in nature. One could detect organised patterns: the umbrella’s surface affords modulated water to be heard as melodies: notes, noises and even drum beats, and songs can be heard (the installation played the song “Singing in the Rain”, naturally). The umbrella could be moved, which produced changes to the sound but kept the melody identifiable. But the surprising and fun effect of Aquatic Music and A Light Rain

Qualities of Simplicity in Designing Interactive Art

is the feeling that you are the one (with your umbrella) who creates the music, and this hooks the user to the work (Picture 11). Simple interaction can make people believe in what seems like magic: a water stream under a rainbow turns your umbrella into a musical instrument. One has to experience it to accept that it really works.

The three interactive artworks presented here are very different in execution and con- tent, providing very different user experiences. Yet all share the same regard towards the end user: the interaction is simple, yet powerful enough to make the user enjoy the work. It is also important once again to point out, that without the user there would be no baby to take care

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of in Mother, Child; no lines to animate in Yellowtail, no music to be heard in A Light Rain.

The users and their actions are deeply woven into the works. All of the works presented also share the element of minimalism: the possibilities for interaction are reduced to very few basic actions in all of the cases. Yet they leave a stronger emotional experience than a simple mechan- ical action or interaction with a common everyday object (a door, a light switch, riding a bike). Whereas design often wants to get out of the way, these works give us surprises, let us see, hear and experience familiar things and behavioural patterns in a new way — for many, this is the most important purpose of art. And it was me, as the user of the work, who caused the magic to happen!