A neat NYT piece about the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival which lists the many irritating qualities of contemporary interactive art. Heh.
Problem No. 1: potty-mouthed machines. "PS," by Gretchen Skogerson and Garth Zeglin at the Stata Center, is an oval mirror with a sign that bids you "lean in close." You do. A voice says, "I like to masturbate in public." Ack. Did anyone else hear that? Another voice pipes up, "Psst." You lean into the mirror again, trying not to look at your reflection. A voice says, "I have memories of places I've never been to." So what? Luckily, the room's noise drowns out some of the dirty little secrets.
Problem No. 2: too much ritual, too little time. "1-Bit Love," by Noah Vawter, is a musical altar, a totem covered in foil and exuding a synthetic rhythm (a one-bit wave form). The pillar has red velvet knobs. People are supposed to lay hands on it and turn the knobs to modulate the sound. No one wants to be the first to paw the idol. And once you do, it's not clear what effect you are having.
Then there is "Janken" (Japanese for "hand game"), a game of rock, paper, scissors created by William Tremblay and Rob Gonsalves. Your opponent is a skeletal hand wiggling on a screen. You compete by sticking your own hand in front of a light sensor in the rock position (a fist), paper position (flat out) or scissors position (two fingers ready to snip).
It's creepy and awesome. But there are two hitches: the skeleton will, with no apology, choose its hand position after you've chosen yours (isn't that cheating?); and you've got to orient your own hand exactly or the sensor won't read it correctly.
