+-now

+- now is an interactive art installation by Jen Seevinck, installed at Beta_space in the Sydney Powerhouse Museum, April-June 2008.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger describes two ways of ‘being’ in the world: 1) of ‘being in a room’ or ‘being in a car’; and 2) of ‘being in love’. It is this latter notion that is of interest here. +-now asks the audience to consider the different ways users can ‘be’. It focuses on the deep involvement one can experience in certain types of interaction, such as being engrossed in a conversation or lost in an activity.

+-now is an interactive art system in two parts. The first is the interface comprised of fine white, beach sand, also acting as the projection surface for imagery. Hand gestures in the sand are rendered on the sand’s surface. As gestures accumulate over periods of time, producing visual echoes, the image behaves like a liquid, affording an immediate sense of play. The second part os the system consists of a separate projection on a large screen, thus offering the user a more reflective experience. Though the sand remains the input point to the aesthetic outcome, here the visual echoes can lead to new shapes at varying shades of opaqueness.

A related element to the overall experience of +-now is to improvise in time, or with the history of one’s gestures. The created objects now become perceived objects that exist, though not directly a product of the computer. An everyday comparison might be cloud gazing, and the interpretation of shapes and figures one might attach. As one starts to interpret form and infer meaning, are they not losing themselves in their surroundings? The focus of +-now will be the effectiveness of the interactive experience resulting in the sense of immersivity, or “getting lost” in the activity.

Research Queries

+-now is an interactive art system using a tangible interface and a simulation agent being developed through iterative methods.

The first iteration, Glass Pond was evaluated in a pilot study at the Creativity and Cognition Studios in 2005. Installation of +-now at Beta_space has enabled the artist to conduct a second, more extensive evaluation using members of the general public. Testing reviews the first round of issues regarding user experience, design, and performance to see if these have been resolved.

User testing also informs questions of emergence, as indicated by an earlier investigation of user experience of this work. Emergence was found to occur during interaction with the work as discussed  in “Emergence and the art system ‘plus minus now’ (Seevinck & Edmonds, Design Studies, Volume 29, Issue 6, November 2008, Pages 541-555)