pplkpr is an app that also poses as an art piece that tracks, analyzes, and auto-manages your relationships. Using a smartwatch, pplkpr monitors your physical and emotional response to the people around you. It watches your heart beat so it can sense when youre stressed, excited or calm, then it inquires who youre with. Based on that data it uses your facebook to either repel (ex. unfriend) or attract (ex. poke) that person that will optimize your relationship.

i-s-o-p-t.com – via Iframely

ISOPT (In search of personal time) made a new measurement and device for personalized time. Through workshops an interface and applications were developed which allows users to set their own current time, days of the year and also how fast the time is passing. So everyone would have their own time. Taeyoon made wearable clocks where a user could set the speed at which they wanted time to pass at.

Along with the individual experience there is an interactive network for individuals to share their personalized time. On their website you can see the “consensus” time for a group of people or an individual’s personal time.

i-s-o-p-t.com – via Iframely

Vimeo / OKIO STUDIO – via Iframely

Movie made for the Oculus Rift and other kind of virtual reality masks.

Some views and experiences on a day in Paris : a museum, a car on a circuit, a roller-coaster, a countryside, a concert and the Eiffel Tower from a bridge.
All shoot on live action.

Vimeo / haque d+r – via Iframely

Osman Haque first showed his mass-participation interactive spectacle on a public square in Eindhoven, Netherlands. As described on its official Youtube post, “Your voice creates the space around you, reverberates in many ways long after you have stopped speaking. In Marling the voices of citizens are given form through spectacular effects that hang in the air above the crowd, forming a delicate, intricate ceiling of animated color. People become players on the urban stage, together bringing the space to life through their actions and sounds, and building a shared public memory of collaboration that, hopefully, will last long after the event. “

With watching the movie, you can see people trying to develop sounds with different paces, volumn and rhythm via different medium (footstep, shout, sing etc.) Haze machine enables moving image to be shown in the air – people can see how shapes and forms interact with their own sound.

More and more people gathered, they keep testing different sounds and the visual transformation they got as reward. They keep doing experiment with it, making other pass-bys involved as well.

The video doesn’t really show how this spectator work begins, so we cannot make sure how the first group of people get engaged into this kind of public art piece. Since it is a show, the first group of people should be organized or informed to go there. However, we could predict that even if there is no sign, just this beautiful floating ceiling hanged in air, people will finally gather at that public place.

## Involving people

There is a very famous psychological experiment, or say, tricky game, that people love to play again and again. Imagine you and some of your friends are on the way to campus. You guys decided to try treat other passing buys. You all stopped, standing and looking at somewhere into the sky. Keep doing this for several minutes, people who passed by will quickly join in your group, looking into the sky.

Sometimes one of them may ask: So what on earth do you guys looking for? While “honest” people would say:”well, I don’t know either”, there must be another smart guy:”Oh, they said they just saw UFO.”

Even if there is nothing happened, people are willing to spend time watching or waiting as the previous people. A group of people creates reliable and valuable atmosphere that makes passing-bys believe there is something deserve a try.

## Gaming or Learning

How do people find this moving image follows sound? Answer is obvious: They show interactive responses. Though the video is not really in high resolution and a little bit shaky, we can see that moving image varies its wave and shape in order to show that they were performing different kind of sound and different frequency of sound.

One important role in gaming is actually learning. People seldom realize that gaming is actually following some basic principles in “good learning”. They can be separated into 4 parts:

### Trigger
The moving image is already projected into air (?haze) when there is no intentional sound created by spectators. There is noise – footpads, cars, trees, birds – those random sound triggers basic wave of image that greatly attract people’s eyes. They started to think why it is there, and that leads to other following steps.

Trigger is very important in both learning and gaming. Without trigger, people have less intention into going out the first step. Make something cool or weird that people would like to stop by is half success of game or education. In this case, A huge colorful ribbon-like virtual image is pretty weird in such a public place. People stopped by, then game begins.

## Context
We also have to notice that this first happened in Netherland. Netherland is a country that has many outstanding interactive media artist. People are familiar with expanded theater works and public art creations. They believe that these are funny, and safe things.

This is important because gaming really needs a good environment. We can list a lot of good and unforgettable games that are actually using the same simple mechanism, but brings very different experience. Think about Puzzle Bobble and Candy Crush. They are both finding objects that share same color and are affiliated to each other, and then remove them. If you finished the goal, you can go to next stage. If not, you should stay here, retry of fail the game.

They share so many similar ideas, but the huge difference is environment – in this case, the user experience of two games. Candy Crush creates a sweet, slow and sugaring feeling, while actually your time of loss in it would be far more than in Puzzle Bobble.

When coming into large scale, Marling, the sound game, also has some implications in it. What if this happened in a country that was just suffering in disease, poverty or war? Will people still think this kind of digital color and uncertain wave still amusing and intended to play with?

Context is actually the base of how we see and understand the outside world. One of the cognitive process is from top to bottom. Only if you has some experience before, or hold a good expectation on it could you feel it’s a game. Else, it could be scarful as well.

### Feedback, repeat and reward
A good education or a good game is thousands of repeated actions. Remembering a long and unusual English word – 7 times; learning riding a bicycle or driving a car – 20 hours practice at least. If you wish to be an expert in any of field, a common saying is that you should spend 10000 hours into it.

In gaming, it has the same idea. Every game has repeated elements, process and actions going on, which helps you build fundamental knowledge of this gaming world.

Repeat makes things reliable. You have a prediction or expectation on something. You do it, and then you get the feedback. You do it again, and you get the same feedback. Thus, you know that you are doing the right thing that fits the mechanism or either the study process or the game. You would be willing to continuously do it.

What if there is no feedback, or always give feedback in variable way? People will easily be frustrated and then leave off. The way people trying to structure a mechanism is fragile; failure at first time annoyed them a lot as well.

This also makes sense why interactive installation in public area of has wider access to cause change or trigger the game starts. People might feel more embarrassed in public than in museum or gallery that nobody really looks at them. Consider those who take selfies with masterpieces – they really enjoy themselves! However they would not be willing to do stupid things in very outside public space, while there are many people around.

Easy and positive feedback gives confidence to spectators in this case. No matter what kind of sound it is, you see significant change in the shape and color. Actually, we cannot say that the change of moving image is EXACTLY due to sound created by someone – First, it looks too huge, and kind of random in style anyway. Besides, there is a lot of noise as well as people trying to create sounds around you.

See how people be satisfied by fake reality – you told them that all beautiful spectacle is created by them, and show them a random change. They will believe in that, and quickly get involved in.

### Spectator of Spectators
This looks like title of essay for a business class. However, I think interactive public art, or say game of spectators usually involve this part of human nature.

Nobody would like to play this sound – moving image game alone forever. If there is nobody else, people may carelessly try something, get feedback, and try again, and feedback again. And, well, pretty cool, and then go home.

Things becomes different when there are other people watching. Watching has a very significant effect in both gaming and education. Research shows that students do have better performance in library – not due to the quiet environment. There are many “other students” in the space so that student may have pressure, and then push them into focused studying instead of randomly going to social network or day dreaming. There are also many sports and games that greatly encourage people to be audiance – well, let’s say, nearly all of them do this.

Watching could not always be positive to participants – it may cause pressure. Sometimes it is overwhelm so that people got bad influence from watching. They become annoyed and wish to go away, especially when they do not get good feedback or reward from previous action.

Interactive art in public place has some differences from watched games or study. There is no distinguish line between participants and spectators: everyone joins in, and everyone watches other people. This doubled the effects: people try exploring some different sounds, get feedback, while watching other peoples action and see what are theirs’ feedback. This kind of changing role in interactive public art help broader the possibility of game. People learn faster about what it would probably be when he makes a certain action.

The other factor is our big Egos. There is no deny that people are born self-centric. A humorous saying is that: no matter how much does a person say that he/she care others that much, show him a group photo, and you could quickly figure out that he is trying to find himself first. We enjoy being the center of world from very beginning of like, and watching, especially watched by other people with admiration and expectation, makes people excited. This kind of emotional priming keeps spectators stayed in the game for very long time, get really involved, and, just like Usman Haque said, “0building a shared public memory of collaboration that, hopefully, will last long after the event. “
”

When my parents says that we are going to the theatre tonight, they mean we are going to a nice building with air conditioning, sitting is some comfy seats, and that we will be entertained. We will watch others perform a story. After two to three hours we will get up and take a taxi home. Blast Theory is a collective from the UK who blows this set up into dust. At the moment, I am experiencing their project Karen that is a digital life coach who you speak with every day. This project in collaboration with national Theatre Wales takes us into the realm of intimacy, entertainment and the uncanny. One interacts with this piece through an app on your phone. You begin and it feels like a real Skype type conversation, and then the questions begin. They reach these themes through use of advanced technology, play with how humans interact ion the digital age, and trust.

The media technology behind this is a phone app and the analysis of hundreds of personality tests. Karen asks you questions and you answer in words or a sliding scale from agree to disagree. From the questions you have answered behind the scenes technology processes that data to come to conclusions that seem almost magical. It seems as if Karen has been spying on you. “We’re interested in the intimacy of mobile phones,” Matt Adams, one of the creators, said. “How they might be thought of as a cultural space. Karen was an opportunity to take this strategy further — how you might engage with a fictional character who is software-driven.’ Phones are a part of everyday life, so Blast Theory harnessed that technology to put it towards a different end then normal. Phones are as much of a cultural space as a coffee shop. One can chat or pontificate with or at others with a touch of the screen. Karen is successful in that it extends theatre using fairly simple technology that’s already in our pocket.

Phones are how we as a society now live. The NY Times reported “The Pew Research Center survey found 63 percent of mobile phone owners now use their phone to go online. And because 91 percent of Americans now own a cell phone, this means that 57 percent are cell Internet users.” Blast theory is building on this societal mechanism, which is constant in our lives. One goes to dinner and everyone is on his or her phone. People use it for fitness tracking, calendar, research, entertainment, and actual mental health. There are many actual therapy apps such as Talkspace, My Psych, and Couples Counseling. People use these in moments of desperation and on a daily basis. The space Karen plays with is really a way people reach out for help. Karen allows people to naturally slip into this world of theater. It’s not jolting like leaving a street and going into a luxurious theatre. I pulled out this piece of theater and watched a scene in between doing classwork in a computer lab. Karen achieves the goal of integrating into my life through using the space and terminology that I am used to.

This use of technology does more than take us out of a white box gallery space or theater, it immerses theatre into our every day lives and breaks down barriers. Guy Debord wrote in Towards a Situationist International from 1957 “The most general aim must be to broaden the non-mediocre portion of, to reduce its empty moments as much as possible” (97). This from of expanding theatre is the epitome of reducing empty moments. If you have a free second in between riveting action in life, you can call up Karen and have a chat about your day. This is a way to have immersive theatre enter people’s lives and all that is required is a smartphone. This form of theatre is quite strong because it breaks down barriers such as transportation and intimidation. No one is nervous to type on their phone but many people are scared or lack the ability to pay for a ticket and get to a major theatre. The way technology is expanded in this piece is required to get the message across and introduces the world to a new way to interact with performance.

The premise of this piece is to play with our relationship with big data and the way in which corporations quietly collect data on us for their own use. This combines with the makers research into psychotherapy to create a disturbingly uncanny experience. Evgeny Morozov the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom called out the “disturbing trend whereby our personal information—rather than money—becomes the chief way in which we pay for services—and soon, perhaps, everyday objects—that we use.” Karen does not cost paper money unlike most theatre pieces but it does require vast amounts of personal data to interact with it. The user has to answer on a sliding scale how they feel about themselves, how smart they think they are, and how happy their childhood was. I wouldn’t want this info getting to my professors, bosses, or parents! Yet to interact one must continue. This is the same as using gmail or facebook. Google’s terms of use state “Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.” That means Google is checking for keywords to let advertisers know whom to target. Our everyday is affected by big data like Google’s ad system, we just don’t normally notice. Karen is a form of this, but more in your face. She asks you personal questions and you don’t really trust her but you give it anyway. The questions range from quite tame to intensely personal as time goes on. She then analyses that data and assumes things about you. These conclusions tend to be true which is the scary part.

This work is stunningly invasive which calls to mind the subtlety of the big data giants and the way in which humans automatically trust them. The app sends you notifications late at night to remind you to call Karen. Half an hour after our fourth call, she calls me again. This time she shows me a man she lives with stark naked. Logically you know this is not real, but your mind is unable to separate this interaction from the reality of talking to someone, seeing his or her facial expressions. Karen becomes part of your life, a hectic part. Karen plays with how humans trust and interact with each other. Trust is an integral part of being part of a functioning human society. Amanda Palmer, a musician and do-gooder, said, “When you trust people to help you, they often do“. Karen sets of this situation where we are encouraged to trust her yet something feels off. She looks (really sees nothing) at you and it feels just as real as skyping your parents. The user trusts Karen as a life coach to help, but she is not helping you.

Karen is using the power of everyday instead of relying on fantastical. Seen through the exact wording of Technology and the Avant Garde by Terry Eagleton, this work is an absolute failure. Eagleton asserts that technology means novelty. He says, “What do all moments of modernity supposedly have in common? – just the fact that they are new, the bald formal property of novelty”. Karen is new, created in 2015, but it is not novel in its mechanisms. It is not a new form of visually enticing theatre, but it is a new way of distorting everyday life. It injects theater into the banality of a phone and our everyday. Karen is successful if seen through the core sentiment of this writing. Eagleton seems to mean that new ways of using technology in theatre captures people’s attention which allows the creator to assert his or her own moral imperative onto the viewer. Karen is not a new exciting firework, but it is an extension of non-typical theatre. Eagleton would be amazed by what Karen is able to produce in the viewer.

Karen is building on our relationship with corporations, our trust in technology, and our state of being, quite well, but the question is if it succeeded as a piece of theatre. Theater entertains and educates. It amazes and frees. This piece in not glittering on a Broadway stage and never will be. It relies on blending into the continuation of daily life. It succeeds in planting itself into your actions. You get a notification and you stop what you are doing and experience Karen. Karen cannot be escaped or forgotten because your phone will remind you. This work does not allow you to be an ambivalent spectator; you have to divulge your dark secrets to this sentient program. This piece is successful because it extends the way one interacts with theater while presenting interesting technological and moral issues. It takes on the issue of how we trust big data while entertaining the viewer/participant.

Citations:

“5 Encouraging Therapy Apps for When You Need Some Support.”Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Asay, Matt. “”Big Data Ethics” Sound Great, But They Won’t Stop The NSA—Or Facebook.” Weblog post. Readwrite. N.p., 24 Nov. 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.

Debord, Guy. “Towards a Situationist international.” in Bishop, Claire. “Participation, Whitechapel”, 2006.

Eagleton, Terry. “Cultural Technology and the Avant Garde”, from CULT 2001 Conference Copenhagen, 2001.

“Google Terms of Service – Privacy & Terms – Google.” Google Terms of Service – Privacy & Terms – Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

“Phones Growing as Primary Source of Internet.” NY Daily News. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Rancière, Jacques. “The emancipated spectator”. Verso Books, 2014.

Rose, Frank. “Karen, an App That Knows You All Too Well.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Apr. 2015. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Vimeo / Blast Theory – via Iframely

Vimeo / Mimi Son – via Iframely

Vimeo / Typeone – via Iframely

Vimeo / haque d+r – via Iframely

Usman Haque and his studio Haque Design+Research has been doing great works in interactive architecture. Marling is a mass-participation interactive urban spectacle, and was projected in a public square in Eindhoven, Netherlands. This is the raw recording video; sounds and footprints in it are all real.

In the piace, the voices of citizens are formed as an interactive ceiling of dynamic color. People come and play in this game, and collaboratively build a spectatle that will hopefully last long even after the event finished.

Vimeo / Ross Ashton – via Iframely

“Ut Rosa Flos Florum, sic est Domus Ista Domorum”(As the rose is the flower of flowers, so is this the house of houses) The piece is shown onto the South Transept of York Minster for the 2010 Illuminating York Festival. Over the four days of the installation, “Rose” had 65,000 visitors.

The piece was a meditation on the meaning of Rose in collaboration with Karen Monid.

“Rose” was divided into four sections. The first concentrated on the rose as symbol of Yorkshire, complete with Latin inscription taken from the Cathedral’s chapter house and sounds bring Yorkshire’s wild nature to life. The second section, “Rose Garden” combined love poetry spoken by local volunteers with images of climbing rose trees. This then led into “Mary”, which combined images of the Virgin Mary with an extract of the York Minster choir singing “Magnificat Septimi Toni” by Lassus. The final part was a study of perfection, both mathematical and tonal as glass sounds accompanied stained glass imagery and geometrical shapes and patterns.