Reading 2 (Software)

Erkki Huhtamo "Trouble at the Interface or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art" (2004)


"The active role of the spectator, turned into 'user' or and 'interactor,' was essential."

Richard Wilhelmer's Public Face II is a monumental interactive smiley face that displays the mood of a town in Germany. Displayed at the top of a clock tower in Lindau Germany, this smiley face shows either a smile, frown, or a straight-line mouth to describe the mood of the town's people. Cameras on streets pick up the faces of people through scans. That data is processed and the face depicts the "mood" of the town. The neon elements of the face actually move to make the 3 different faces, rotating the mouth and eye pieces. This interactive work is completely activated by the town's people.

Lev Manovich "Database as Symbolic Form" (1999)


"With new media, the content of the work and the interface become separate. It is therefore possible to create different interfaces to the same material... The new media object consists of one or more interfaces to a database of multimedia material."

Hotels in Berlin, London, and Paris set up an interactive art piece titled, "To Sleep, Perchance to Paint," that dealt with participant's sleep movements, temperatures, and sounds. This sleep art project used 80 sensors that measured the sleeper's behaviors by using a series of advanced algorithms. A computer translated every "snore or change of sleep position into brush strokes for a small robotic arm to paint on a black canvas." This art piece deals with multiple interfaces enabling the content (painting) to be different every time due to each participant's unique sleeping behaviors.

Marvin Minsky, Excerpts from "The Society of Mind" (1988)


"It is not enough to explain only what each separate agent does. We must also understand how those parts are interrelated-that is, how groups of agents can accomplish things."

Arturo Herrera from Venezuela makes huge wall paintings that take into account the room's architecture. At times other artists do his wall paintings, but he gives them specific instructions on how he wants them done. Every aspect of the painting is taken into account, especially the colors. He gives the artists a detailed plan of what colors go where and has them execute it perfectly. What is really interesting is that the artists won't find out what the complete painting looks like until it is done. This step-by-step art piece shows how important it is to make sure each separate thing is executed to the code-like instructions.