Again the question, if stage magic was a key to the successful illusion of the floating.numbers. The interface elements (the numbers with their respective information) were allowed to appear and dispappear as they wanted. Wich would by higly inappropriate for a classical interface. They did it by mapping a swimming fish behavior onto the typographical element. One belives they behave like fish and therefore can act autonomous. I thought their were other things involved to let people forget that it is only a projection and there is a computer behind it. But well you just have to hide it. Period. No more stage magic principles behind it. That is why the interface to our Behind the Screen installation amazed people. And it is why the candleTunes Project worked. Connections between objects were made and their underlying technical connection was hidden.
Where to go now? How does stage magic constructs sense? Are there tricks that makes one object seem to affect another? This supernatural object thing is too short. It is not about overcoming the physical world, the interesting thing is the sucessfull [re]contextualization. So I think I am going to look for tricks, that recontextualize things. And if there are no, I have to look for installations that are sucessfully recontextualizing or mapping things.
A quick note: The autonomous objects Sauter is speaking about made me ask myself how an autonomous object remains believable. Weizenbaums ELIZA was believable to his secretary though she knew about the dullness of the program. The floating.numbers where believable digital fish to play with. The PARO Mental Commitment Robot is believable to japanese elders. Microsofts clippy wasn’t.
So the question may be not how to design magic or astonishment but to design believable autonomy. A coherent character? A coherent autonomous character of an installation that astonishes.
Joachim Sauter, the founder of Art+Com held a speech at the See Conference a few years ago. I found it yesterday and luckily he was talking about the floating.numbers installation. What intrigued me about the table is the point, where the visitors begin to play with the swimming numbers although they are not reactive, its not in the code. This is the illusion that works here very well. What I did not know, this behavior did not emerged, it was planned. Because the where going into out and studied fish and their behavior. The swimming animal metaphor was intended. The Joachim Sauter said, that people stay longer at an installation when it seems to be autonomous. So the illusion is working by establishing a character or face for the object. Then the question is how believable it is. Its about the reactions, animation, dialogue. It reminds me about animism, where every object owns a living character.
Now does that helps for the question about stage magic art and illusionary installations? I thougt of magic in terms of telling a story by using and hiding mechanics. The floating.numbers story was told by making it autonomous. It was not about hiding the projections to establish the illusion. They invented a character and then people did not thought about the mechanics. Sauter was showing a students work, where they were further investigating the concept of autonomous objects. It is called Outerspace An object consisting not more than some servor moters, a light and some capacity sensors. But it works for those who play with it. They do not see the servos. The illusion is working because of a) hiding the mechanics and b) autonomous behavior.
So what does that means for the bachelor thesis? Again, what I want to do is to be able to design astonishment in interactive installations. My idea was that the perfect illusion creates astonishment. And stage magicians are able to create those illusions. But now the new notion of autonomous behavior comes into play as well.
That reminds me of a speech by Patrick Kochlik and Dennis Paul, who really designed and programmed the floating.numbers. In tis talk, they are talking about interfaces as pets. Dennis was a student of Joachim, so this might be a trace.
Found this video this morning. Someone tries to sell blobtracking as interior lighting interaction and calls it the magic light prototype.
It is interesting, because the technology has already been used, but in another context, for example with TMEMAs Messa Di Voce. Maybe there is something magical on the setting itself.
Is it academic to search for astonishment in video documentations of interactive installations? The below is the latest I found this morning, and a nice one. (Mimosa by Jason Bruges Studio) But I did not see an open mouth. Is it ok to guess about the quality of the installation or am I just able to do it by flying to Milano? Which is not really possible. Or what about documentations of installations that are like 20 years old and the real one does not exists anymore.
At least that is what this german article says.
A lighting artist called James Turrell, which was recommended to my be another student. I asked her what was her last installation that astonished her. She was talking about him.
For the record, Ishiies Tangible Media Projects are the kind of projects and installations I want to astonishize. (<- my first invented word for the theory work hehe) When they play with sand and a projector recognizes the sand hills and lets virtual water flowing through it. The idea behind the tangible projects are others, like how we interact with objects. I do not know how far they think of an illusion or how to make their projects astonish people. The question to me is, how does such a question makes sense, because Ishii wants people to be able to work with the tangible things. For that one does not needs to be astonished every day. Does astonishment makes sense in everyday use? Not that much. But how does it makes it easyer and more comfortable in everyday work to be able to forget the technology. Not thinking in terms of projection, but water that flows over sand instead.
What striked me two or three years ago was this video about japanese elderlies, that where kissing and hugging a robot. O, the robot looks like an animal. It is called Paro and what is interesting to me is how much or less one needs to create the illusion of an object with a soul. How we react to Robots, is a field of its own. Think of the Uncanny Valley Theory saying that there is a part between unreal and superreal, a small fraction where a robot seems real oanough to have a soul, but not real enough to appear human. And thats the freaky uncanny valley. I like to use this theory for my abstract 3D works as well btw. When one shows just real real images, it is boring. The interesting part happens when one sees something real, but still artificial enough to appreaciate the interpretation of the reality.
So, mental commitment robots. Is there an uncanny valley with interactive installations?
For the record, I visited a magic show last Friday. The artist was the Berlin based Hieronymus.
Some thoughts. First, I caught myself witnessing the open mouth phenomena. How do magicians create that astonishment? That is the thing I want to be able to design with interactive installations. Astonishment. Open-Mouth -Phenomena.
Furthermore I liked the tricks that worked with invisible things. The audience was throwing an invisible deck of cards back to the magician, he caught it in a bag and zack we were able to see the cards. There was another trick where we had to throw white dots to him and he caught them. So he succeeded making us believing he was working with invisible aka virtual objects and used plain mechanics for that. But the mechanics helped establishing the illusion of virtual objects.
Back to the astonishment. Sadly I can’t recall exactly when I had it. Sometimes when the magician was using his hands fluently to create the tricks. Maybe in a situation when he was working his way through the tricks, like an choreography wich created a sense of flow. The other time he let objects appear and disappear often and was variing the trick. And I asked myself what could he do next? Like how could he improvise the next variation?
Tht is for for the magic show. So, what I am looking for now are installations that create the same astonishment aka open mouth phenomena. And then try looking if one can explain those open mouth phenomena with magic principles.
An object consisting not more than some servor moters, a light and some capacity sensors. But it works for those who play with it. They do not see the servos. The illusion is working because of a) hiding the mechanics and b) autonomous behavior.