My project idea for this final project is to return to the Greed Spider, the first idea I explored in the beginning of the semester but rather than have the spider be controlled by simply me or sensors that are triggered by “sudden movement”, I want to have the spider be controlled by different users over a distance. The way I plan on achieving this is to create a webcam interface, possibly an IRC channel (as a starting point prototype, but I plan on getting more elaborate later) and then to attach a webcam to the spider’s back, where, on a webpage that I plan on building, the spider will be moved depending on a certain number of responses the users give the spider (like say, 100 yes’s will get the spider to go right), and thus, the spider will move according to the number of commands it receives.

To start off, I would like to address each point brought up this week during our in class presentation.

Questions:

How can we close distance gaps through interaction design? What is the future of human relationships as mediated by technology? What everyday physical objects or human experiences can be shared with others across distance?

To answer this, we must ask ourselves how our relationships are affected by distance and how technology can help us overcome that hunch. Humans are just one of many species/organisms that inhabit our sphere that are capable of withstanding robust travel, to be able to adapt to different and evolving environments and to learn how to accustom themselves to different living situations. What does it mean to have a long distance relationship? How are we defined by the environments that we live in and most importantly, what does this say about the way we interact? Where we come from, whether we realize it or not, says a lot about us. Just like other species, we are defined by where we come from. Culture is not simply a free form structure, but something we carry with us, it’s a representation of our ideals, and our belief systems, and what our culture teaches us says a lot about who we are as people.

So how can interaction design help us reach those of us whom we would never seek out? Well, interaction design can bridge and stimulate the interactions we have while also help us simulate and create new meaningful interactions based on recognizing body language/patterns and how we respond to technological signifiers. Because artists create work based on the things they observe in their own environment, the way interaction design engages with it’s audience can be somewhat fuddled in that it has a bias as to who it’s catering to. It’s another bridge that we, as artists, have to cross to make sure our artwork speaks clearly about our intentions and is communicating it’s message effectively.

How we use the objects in our daily lives already reveals a lot about ourselves. I’m hoping to explore, in my project, how we communicate with the objects we use everyday and rely on them to perform the way we expect them to. My quest is to explore how an object would react if it an outcome of it’s use was controlled by more than one person and how that affects the dynamic of the relationship between the user and the object.