We’ll have all semester to talk about and create computational interactive art, but interactive art isn’t a medium confined to the computer.  I thought I would focus my first Looking Outwards on three pieces of fantastic non-electronic interactive art.

Train:

Train by Brenda Brathwaite (2009)

Train is a board game entirely unlike anything else.  Created by Brenda Brathwaite as part of a series of non-traditional boardgames, players compete to load small yellow pawns into train cars, cramming them through the too-small entrance of the cars.  Each turn, players can roll a dice and either move their car forward/backward that many spaces, or add or remove that many people from their car.  Instructions, read out of an antique type-writer, are terse and open to interpretation, including the victory condition:  “Train is over when it ends.”  The true message of Train is only revealed when a player’s train reaches the end of its track, and that player may read the card which tells them their destination:  Auschwitz.

When the message of the game is revealed, the mechanics take on a new, sinister context, one which forces the player to think about the consequences of their actions.

Self-Centered Mirror:

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1ZaSEbO4iY”]
The Self-Centered Mirror, a piece of interactive sculpture by Daniel Rozin, is a series of 34 cunningly arranged mirrors that will reflect your image and only your image, stripping everyone else out of the room. Due to the nature of the installation, participants generally will make unusual gestures and poses, which are from their gaze private. The artist refers to it as “…lift[ing] the last obstacle from [humanity] in the quest to total narcissism.” Though Rozin didn’t take any, I would have liked to see as part of the documentation video footage of people admiring themselves in the mirror.

The Compass Table:

Compass Table by Dunne and Raby (2001)

The Compass Table is a novel piece of furniture design by Dunne and Raby as part of The Placebo Project. A wooden table inset with magnetic compasses, The Compass Table allows us to see the effects of electromagnetic fields. When an electromagnetic field is generated (such as by a cell phone), the compasses twitch and move. In this way, the table shows viewers the invisible signals that surround them, exposing an entire world that exists right between our noses.