via Tangible Affect (DIS ‘24)
What it says
A movement in an interactive system can do two different jobs. It can be an input — a value the system reads. Or it can be an expression — something the person is performing, which happens also to be legible to the system. Designing for expressivity means building for the second without losing the first.
Does it hold for my work
Directly, and it names something I have been assuming without a word for it. In my installations the audience’s movement was never only a control signal. Someone playing in front of other people is performing whether or not they intend to.
Under v4 this gets sharper. If strangers are in the room together, every action a person takes is visible to the others — which means expressivity is not an optional design goal, it is a condition that exists whether I design for it or not.
Where it connects
- Shared involvement — what the others do with what they see.
- System of enunciation — if the audience is expressing, the audience is part of what the work says.
- Friction as feature — difficulty makes expression visible, because effort shows.