Instructor:

Daniel Rozin: Interactive artist and educator. Originally trained as an industrial designer, developed an arts practice at ITP, and has since been exhibited widely. His work deals heavily with the idea of witnessing and/or mirroring, and is executed through complex mechanical arrangements.

Class:

It’s key to understand that there is no such thing as “digital” per-se. Rather, everything in the world is analog, and what’s “digital” is what we’ve decided to bound and normalize.

Our bodies have a plethora of senses and tools for communication, and yet in our use of “digital” tools we are force to dumb ourselves down. Think about cramming all of that vibrant possibility into a keyboard with 110 keys. This, despite these tools being extremely expressive in principle.

In making interactive work, we have to be weary of the phone - it is the perfect “general” machine. What we are trying to do is one thing, perfectly, and for this the phone is not particularly useful.

When creating work, try to first solve one problem, and then generalize it - not the other way around.

Interaction is NOT reaction - we want a system to follow a input→sense→think→respond cycle where there is a potential for the unexpected involved.

Assignment:

https://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/week-to-week-activity/

Labs (Documentation):

^ Figuring out the polarity of a butchered power supply.

^ Prepping the power supply for use.