threads of influence :
Like any medium, interactive objects and spaces have many influences. While we could spend an entire term looking at these, it's worth touching on them briefly. You should research these further as you develop projects. A few of these influences:
The Fluxus Movement - In the sixties, a movement developed that challenged many of the prevailing ideas about what were appropriate venues and methods of expression, and the expressions themselves. This made much of what followed in experimental media and performance art possible. Some participants you my recognize include Yoko Ono (before she met John Lennon) and Nam June Paik. To quote Peter Frank in the article referenced below:
[the] aesthetic encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion. Fluxus presaged avant-garde developments over the last 40 years.
www.artcommotion.com/Issue2/VisualArts/#Fluxus (article
by critic Peter Frank)
www.nutscape.com/fluxus/homepage/ (fluxus
site)
www.fluxus.org (fluxus site)
Old multimedia - Multimedia used to stand for performances that included film, multiple slide projectors, light projections, big sound systems, and often people on stage. Major figures in this movement include Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead for the Acid Tests. One fan described the events:
The Pranksters were made famous for their acid tests, which were huge "happenings" in which the Pranksters and the audience would all participate in a night-long trip (the first raves perhaps?). Owsley's reputable LSD was provided free of charge for each acid test. Live music blasted from hundreds of mics and amplifiers and reverb machines provided by the Grateful Dead. Film projectors ran constantly, flashing colorful images of the Prankster's bus trip across the country, flowers and psychedelic-swirly-rainbow-trippy images and everything else imaginable. A continual light show of strobe lights and lasers was on constant display. The walls were covered with beautiful psychedelic patters of day-glo paint under black lights. The goal of these acid tests was to try and get everyone in the same "unspoken thing" groove, where all would experience the same miraculous trip and reach a higher level of consciousness, awareness, and mutual understanding.
onthebus.cjb.net (the above quote)
www.pranksterweb.org/acid.htm (another
description)
Charles and Rays Eames were also major influences on the development of multimedia. Their production of "Glimpses of the USA" was a huge seven screen production at the 1959 World's Fair in Moscow. This and their IBM sponsored exhibit "Mathematica" were landmarks in the development of multiple media and interaction design.
www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/mathematica.html (description
of Mathematica)
photos of the exhibit when
it was recently restored
New Multimedia - Since the late eighties, multimedia
was reborn in digital media. The advent of computers that could handle
a variety of media led to everything from computer games to CD-ROMs to
DVDs to the Web. This also led to the advent of "media art" and "net
art". This is a very big field, so just a few links to get you started.
www.media.mit.edu (hub of work
in digital stuff)
www.rhizome.org (media art organization)
www.interactingarts.org (media
art organization)
artport.whitney.org/ (net
media archive)
Experimental Music - A lot of work on alternative interfaces and authoring environments has come out of the experimental music field. For example, the MIDI and audio authoring environment MAX came from this movement. This led to experiments in other performance fields as well, especially dance, where sensors are attached to the performers to control music, lighting, video, etc.
www.ircam.fr/accueil.html?L=1 (research
institution - english version)
www.steim.org/steim/ (research
institution)
ccrma.stanford.edu (research
institution)
www.troikaranch.org (digital
dance company)
www.buchla.com (pioneer)
www.moogmusic.com (pioneer)
www.csounds.com/mathews/ (pioneer)
www.cycling74.com (music software
including MAX)
www.infusionsystems.com (hardware
used by many people in this field)
www.mspinky.com (software/hardware
merging real turntables and computers)
Robotics - The field of robotics, especially the recent development of amateur robotics, has created a lot of tools and information for building systems with sensors and effectors. They may not have design in mind, but they are real geeks and engineers.
www.solarbotics.com
www.acroname.com
www.battlebots.com
Consumer and Industrial Electronics - The mass production of consumer and industrial electronics makes this all possible. Without mobile phones, microwaves, stereos, computers, video cameras and all the other products that make up modern life, building interactive objects and spaces would be prohibitively expensive. All of the sensors and electronics are cheap because they are made in vast quantities for the consumer and commercial markets. Alongside this is the product design and engineering fields, which support much of the prototyping tools (e.g. Basicstamp) that make it easier to produce the kind of one-off experiments we do.