J . M A I L

Art Interactivity

I have been thinking about an exhibit lately focusing on touch interactivity, audio prompts, and visual reveals.

The idea is pretty simple, a show case of different interaction metaphors which each reveal a visual piece of art or info-graphic. Leveraging iPads as the interaction canvases different interaction methods would reveal related work.

For example…

A pair of headphones is attached to one of the screen mounted on the gallery wall. When a person places the head phones on they hear the beating of a human heart. At first all that would be seen on the display would be the icon of a heart and a red circle. When a person taps inside the circle in time to the heard beat on the audio track the circle would slowly turn green indicating progress of the interaction (red - green traffic light progression). After a set number of correct taps in the right rhythm an info-graphic would be revealed above the interaction space of the canvas.

This sort of piece would invite the audience to play with the piece, discover the interaction naturally through visual feed back and transition an audio cue, to a touch interaction, and ultimately to visual reveal/reward. Such a piece would also invite other on lookers to observe the participant using the piece and study the interaction required to “unlock” the work.

Other such interactions could include having one hand of the participant move one touch point up and down and one touch point left to right using the other hand of the participant to reveal the work.

E.G.

I envision maybe 5 - 6 different interaction metaphors making up the exhibit, each interaction inviting trial and error, playfulness, observation, and discovery.

Let me know what you guys/girls think of this and if you might like to be involved. If you think this is just crazy let me know that to. :)

Tablets, Netbooks, Nooks, Galore

I am trying to decide if I should pick up a new laptop or tablet. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Here is some internal dialogue:

1. Do I need a new tablet, netbook, or ereader

Answer: No.

2. Should I get an ereader for reading papers?

Answer: No, I can’t annotate them with any kind of stylus. I also like physical paper and books.

3: Should I get a tablet?

Answer: For what I do, word, firefox, and digsby ~ maybe.

4. Should I get an iPad?

Answer: Not when things like this are coming out.

5. What about a laptop?

I am thinking about this one:

Thin, light (3 pounds), 8 + hours of battery, i3 culv processor and then I would add an 80 gig intel ssd hd (specs/link)

Price would come out to about $850 cad

…

To be honest I shouldn’t really buy any of these but that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about all the new toys out there. My current laptop is fine cpu wise, the only thing that might be nice is better battery and an ssd drive.

I could buy an ssd drive and add it to the current laptop to see how I like it.

Another thought I have had is that if I am gonna upgrade then maybe I should get a 13” model but feel that 11.6” might be the perfect size.

Now the things about the toys is that none of them would break the bank. If I didn’t already have an 11.6” laptop I would get either a table or new laptop for sure. The question is whether to upgrade to a whole new machine when I don’t really need to, wait and then upgrade, get a new ssd drive and stick with the current machine, or buy nothing and save the cash.

What do you think blog-o-sphere?