All the stuff
"I'd rather de dead than cool."
-Kurt Cobain (Stay Away)
Introduction
Traditional platforms of advertising were mostly two-dimensional: a billboard, poster, print and tv. I believe something physical (takes up volume and space) adds depth and versatility to whatever the message is. In addition, since it takes up space designers can determine interaction can aid the understanding of the piece.
Interaction can be done passively or actively; simply observing the piece compared to physically acting upon it to understand it. Our piece is about physically limiting how the audience can interact with our work; there is a conflict between what they want and what's given.
Cobain was the epitome of what's cool, yet he doesn't want to be labelled as such because he believes "chasing cool" is pointless and anybody who does it is an idiot. We want to combine Cobain's idea of nonconformity with today's information saturated environment, to ask how are you today?
We are taught to respond to that question in the same way, regardless of whatever we feel. We want to explore what exactly is limiting our response, what is stopping us from saying what we really mean.
Passive
Gafisa, Brazil 2004
Brazilian real estate company Gafisa had a floor plan printed to scale in the lobby of a popular mall. There were a mix of real furniture with printed ones in their respective rooms along with actors interacting with the furniture: people sitting and reading newspapers in the armchairs, a butler attending somebody taking a bath, and real estate agents bringing genuine customers to the "show room". It was reported that over 30% sales were made because of this. Passerby are elevated to the customer status, traditionally house hunting require going to actual showrooms, in this case the showroom was brought to them. Regular people can now also get a glimpse of what a luxurious condo looks like.
This is an example of a guerilla ad, bringing your message to somewhere unconventional so the response is not that cynical. To bring the real estate company closer to the audience, actors "living" inside the installation give a sense of liveliness, making it easier to picture living it in. Couple that with 1:1 scale and actual furniture, it makes sense that the condo would sell really well.
Grasp Pendulum, Ottobock Headquarters, 2009
Ottobock makes prosthetic limbs, so it makes sense that you want the entrance to say something about it. A silhouettes of a hand pulling, grasping, shaking and throwing are projected in each little screen, with the motion of the hand matching the pendulum's. At the end of the segment visitors can project their own hands in the screens. The installation highlights the dexterity of their prosthetic hands; not only showing how natural they are, but a "real" hand sharing the same screen as a digital one highlights the life-likeness of their prosthetics.
However, in this case participation is not necessary to get the message. Similar to Gafisa's stunt, audience members do not need to commit themselves to the piece to understand. This isn't to say it's not effective, but different places require different forms of interaction; you're not going to get a lot of active participation in a prosthetic headquarters, there might be a lot of people in the mall, but most of them are busy doing something so you need a stunt to grab their attention.
https://artcom.de/book/pendulum
Cloud, Kinetic Sculpture, British Airways, 2008
Toroika did something different, instead of selling or promoting an idea, Cloud was simply a sculpture that welcomes passengers to the new British Airways lounge. It's main purpose was to tell passengers they are entering a new place, a new and dazzling lounge for lucky passengers. Toroika harks back to the heyday of flipdot technology, something that was traditionally used in train stations and airports. 5m long, an animation software constantly changes the dots, creating both a visually cascading effect with an auditory one.
The main purpose of Cloud is to create a mood for the passengers, so it makes sense that this piece is so visually different from the previous installations. For something to evoke a feeling of modernity and luxury, you need to create something stunning, in this case it's a wave of cascading dots and clicking sounds. The interaction is minimal, but just by looking at it you know the lounge is going to be a cool place; something like a welcome carpet outside the main room.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOCjZSc4kDQ
In general passive interaction mostly deal with instilling an idea, their effectiveness varies but most of the time they are easily forgotten.
The advantages of passive interaction (a good one):
- Can easily reach out to huge crowds of people
- Easy to understand without being involved in it
- Infiltration, guerilla tactics, and packaging design are all examples of passive interaction (widely used)
Active
SMSlinghot, Vr/Urban, 2009
Vr/Urban wants us to reclaim public space from adverts. They want to fight major advertising companies and encourage free speech; liberating facades from the messages that encourage overconsumption. Loading a "ball" of message then letting it loose on a surface has this "rebel" feel to it (putting a message on any surface), and that's what Vr/Urban is trying to get at. Participants need to type in their messages on their slingshots, which is wirelessly transmitted to the computer. A laser pointer is shown when the sling is pulled, then the projector shows the message splattered on the whatever surface when the sling is released. The goal/message is revealed only when the participants use the slingshots. Sure it's fun to write random things, but take a step closer and you'll realise what they are saying. In addition, the act of aiming requires the audience to look up, just like looking up and seeing things from a different perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qx-ox2fcKA
Touched Echo, Markus Kison, 2007
Kison uses bone conduction to create a minimal media installation that transport participants back to Dresden in WWII. You can only hear the sound when you cup your ears and rest your elbows on the railing, because there is a little machine that vibrates the railing in specific frequencies, and only by cupping their ears you can hear what a resident of Dresden had to go through on that night.
Touched Echo forces the audience to position themselves just like the citizens of Dresden when it was carpet bombed. Covering the ears and hearing the bombs drop adds the emotional effect that no books can replicate. Kison illustrates that you don't need to see something to feel, you can just mimic the body posture and be transported back half a century ago.
http://www.markuskison.de/touched_echo.html
Active interaction:
- Meaningful and memorable
- Creates opportunities for more reflection
Interaction
Big takeaway lessons:
- Documentation via video is more than just documentation:
- Gives context for the piece, makes it grounded and can see the interaction between piece and people
- Can tarnish and ruin the project’s idea if done horribly, basically a shit video can make your magus opus look like shit too. Vice versa for a good video.
- Gradually can see your piece get affected by time, time lapse or whatever…basically we know how the piece reached its final state (we see ice melting, and not just a puddle of water)
- Group work makes me reflect about how I work:
- I can be a push-over, taking and managing most of the project
- My erratic behaviour doesn’t help
- But honestly, sometimes I’m not sure if my partner is at fault or I am
- Numerous issues arise without a clear way to fix them
- Location, culture and interaction were all different from what I expected
- I could have chosen a better location with more people, instead we chose places that were familiar and close because we just wanted to finish the project
- My piece lacked a trigger to get attention, and a reason to participate
- There wasn’t any reason for the people to care, not enough to stimulate any curiosity (to see it completed, progress over time or interesting)
- Not all’s bad though
- Conceptually it was sound, but it is pretty vague—we control how the audience can interact with our piece, through that limitation they reflect on what is limiting them in their lives
- So yeah everything was bad
- If I had more time…(all that stuff)
- Work with our individual strengths, create something that emphasises space and volume, combine that with my partner’s affinity towards fashuuuun and we could have made a stronger piece
- Be crazier and place it in bigger spaces, videotaped it in a better way
I’ve always mixed in some interaction in my works, this project made me realise that most of them were passive and that they don’t need to be visually stunning to work. I work with clear shapes and form, I like my piece to be varied and jagged and just abrupt. My first project in GCD made me realise I adapt to survive.
Questions:
- Working as a pair
- Even though we were a pair, I felt that I was responsible for most of the work. The idea exchange was mainly one-sided, and there wasn't much modification from mine. Normally as a pair the end result would be a compromise of both party's idea.
- Adapt to public space, interacting with the public
- We were timid in placing our works in places familiar to us. The responses we got were also not genuine--we had to instruct people to interact with it, which wasn't natural
- From other groups' experiences, people are receptive to works, so that must mean mine wasn't obvious and clear that it's an interaction piece
- Other strategies from other groups that were effective
- Well, video editing is now a must
- Be more ambitious in location
- Combining skills
Archway campus and KX campus