Conception
YMYI (You Move You Interact) is an interactive installation,
where one is supposed to build up a body language dialogue
with an artificial system so as to effectively achieve
a synchronized performance between the real user's body
and the virtual object itself. The project aims at exploring
a spatial sphere,where the user/performer is invited to
develop his own creative inspiration based on his own
body gestures and movements.
|
|
|
During the whole time assigned to
research related to both the development and the scientific foundation
stone of the prototype itself, we realised, in so far as the expectations
brought on the user of the YMYI platform were concerned, that
we were dealing with two key conceptions - narrative and image.
Underlying these concepts, in-between the dual dimension of the
human body and its perception of itself and the surrounding environment,we
truly believe that the definitions given on this subject by the
scientist Antonio Damasio constituted a resourceful enlightement
to the scope of our investigation.
According to Damasio, on the one
hand "the images (mental patterns) may be conscious or
unconscious (...) The unconscious images are never directly accessible.
The images access is to be provided in a single first person perspective
( my images, everyones images). On the other hand, the neural
patterns are to be provided in a third person perspective. If
I considered the possibility of observing my own neural patterns
resorting to advanced technology, I would be always doing it in
the third person perspective." ( DAMASIO, 2000:362).
We have the pleasure of leaving
you an excerpt of his book "The Feeling of What Happens",
which sums up the idealised proposal to the users of the YMYI
artefact:
"It narrates a story, the
story of a living organism unexpectedly astonished by
performing its own change status while representing an
object. However, what strikes the most is the fact that
the knowing entity responsile for the act of astonishing
is only created throughout the astonishment narration
process."
(Damasio: 2000: 202.) |
Experiencing the YMYI artefact
The YMYI artefact proposes a body
dialogue between a user and a digital system, based on a live
performance with gestures and movements within an interactive
space. Thus, YMYI aims at exploring a space where a user develops
an ongoing creative process duly synchronised with his own motion
actions.
By entering a so-called
"stage", where the YMYI interactive installation
takes place, the user meets, at a first glance, a whole
regiment of particles flying in diverse directions and speed
throughout the digital system. Within the experiencing sphere
of the interaction itself, the user sees his own anatomic
silhouette embodied in the canvas, in the shape of lines
and curves. Meanwhile, the user realises that his gestures
and movements, actually synchronised with his own physical
displacement within the interactive "stage", migrate
in real time to the canvas. The performance acquires new
shapes and contours. The space opens itself to tridimensionality.
By moving leftwards or rightwards, upwards or downwards,
the displayed interactive "me" goes hand in hand
with the users own theatrical actions. The system becomes
a stage which lets the emotion and the creativity come in.
The living experience is unique and subjective. |
|
|
The dramatic emphasis of the performance
deepens: gestures embed themselves in sounds created by the body,
like breathing, walking, standing up, hiding, as if we one was
dealing with a contemporary dance performance.
The huge number of particles moving around the user fill in the
scene background. They seem to have a life of their own, featuring
living, dynamic and electrifying properties. Such particles tend
to concentrate themselves in the edges of both the superior and
inferior limbs. Feet and hands become a converging magnet able
to attract and join them in a collective "bubble". It
is as if they behaved as a physical extension of the users body
or embodiment. Thus, both particles and user form a single, united
element, shining glamorously throughout the interface.
|
|
In this
interactive scope, the user realises that light/soft movements
bring on greater interactivity and emotion. Such an experience
is "affordable" by the natural convergence of
the whole particles throughout the given parts of the user
body as a result from his gestures. If we try moving the
left hand or the right one, or even the left foot or right
one, the particles flow to each one of their edges accordingly.
If we try to put our hands or arms in a downwards position,
the particles flow upwards until they reach an upper position
" the users own head. The interaction is experienced
in a richer, more creative and more artistic way.
|
Another outstanding feature belonging
to the interactive experience is actually the sound. In the YMYI
artefact, we experience a synchronising sound reactive to the
gestures dynamics of the user himself. The sound emits low in
pitch or sharp frequencies, responding in real time to the users
position, whether he is standing (upwards) or sitting/hiding (downwards),
respectively. Right on the top of the canvas, a sensitive sound
to the touching facility of the user has the ability to project
a sonorous lightning flash whose energy goes through the inner
self.
In the artefact YMYI, the sound
is a sole element which travels in harmony through the flowing
gestures of the user within the interactive space so as to provide
guidance and "affordance" to the user himself, in its
artistic dimension. If the user stops moving, the sound concentrates
in itself an ongoing powerful energy which provides a growing
amplitude, whether in low pitch or sharp frequencies, which on
their turn, become reactive to and at the same time dependent
on the inferior or superior position of the users embodiment limbs,
respectively.
The sound provides a multimodal
enrichment to the whole interactive experience and creates by
itself together with image and movement an interactive guide to
the appropriation, exploration, knowledge and live experience
of the artefact.
Human-computer interaction
and enlightenment in the YMYI project
Keynotes: affordance (by J.J. Gibson);
embodiment; animation; multimodal interaction; input vs. output;
interface design heuristics; interaction paradigms; emotion.
The Project You Move You Interact
magnifies an essential keystone within the human-computer interaction
science: the interactivity itself, which in this particular project
achieves a high standard of success in performing an evolving
artistic interface design generated from affordances, interconnected
with the relational actions between a user and a digital system.
Such affordances are neither explicit nor visible in the interface.
They result, otherwise, of an input based on the exploration/discovery
of an actors body movements in an interactive "stage"
as well as of an output based on his embodiment display in an
interface full of small particles, which energize a close communication
link with the user himself, either by moving towards him, or by
concentrating themselves on the edges of both his superior and
inferior limbs.
As for the interface
design in the context of usability is concerned, we can
actually acknowledge that the project YMYI fulfills two
main outstanding heuristic rules: the visibility and the
consistence of the whole system. The visibility of the system
modus operandi, on the one hand, in the sense of providing
information to the user at all times, is always immediate
" the user is able to display what he is doing at the
moment and how the system is processing his actions. The
visibility of the system modus operandi, on the other hand,
in the sense of being capable of providing a reply/an output
in real time, induces a perception of spontaneousness or
natural impulse, reassuring that the user is developing
a constant focus on the system, so as to effectively display
his embodiment contours drawn non-stop on the interface.
Beyond that, the user does not need any sort of operation
guidelines in order to learn how the system works. The project
also conducts an effects consi! stency, being able to successfully
harmonize prediction, i.e. specific actions result in a
same effect in similar circumstances , for example, when
the user leans himself onto the floor, the sound element
becomes gradually lower in pitch, and on the contrary, when
the user stands up, the same sound element becomes gradually
higher in pitch. The way in to information/ visual cognitive
analysis is achieved through a fundamental universal design
rule " the multimodal interaction, which aggregates
all the human senses. |
|
|
In the project YMYI, the most outstanding
senses are the following: vision, which enables the user to display
the ongoing animation of the whole picture; the hearing of programmed
sounds (high-pitch and low-pitch), which provide, on their turn,
a growing efficiency to the monitoring process that the user makes
of himself and of the sonorous events that are continuously being
generated in the interface. Such sounds have a tendency to react
to the user movements throughout the space and as such they can
function both as meaningful analysis cues and attention focuses
for the user to interact with the system. The sounds are also
quite effective in deepening the emotional insight/experience
of the users interaction; the haptic-kinestesic sense, which boosts
the whole implicit input towards the system, allowing us to say
that the project deals with the emergent areas related to perceptual
interfaces, shaped by the use of computer vision techniques and
motion tracking technol! ogies. Quoting Ben Schneiderman (1997):
"When an interactive system is well
designed, the interface almost disappears, enabling users
to concentrate on their work, exploration, or pleasure.
Creating an environment in which tasks are carried out almost
effortlessly". |
We truly believe that this definition applies itself on the whole
to the YMYI project. YMYI is successful in putting together both
the interaction paradigm directed to the user graphic interface
and the interaction paradigm directed to natural means of communication,
namely by using human gesture features, which definitely enlighten
the physical interactive experience.
|