Burning Man is, in theory, devoted to interactive art. But, speaking from experience, those sorts of artworks are incredibly hard to create. In the Bay Area we have an interdisciplinary art community that can pump them out on a regular basis, but the costs to people's personal lives are immense. (Not to mention that people who like to create this sort of stuff rarely want to run it on a regular basis. They want to be Imagineers in their spare time, not full-time carnies.)
And what do we get when people show up? People seem to enjoy looking at the bizarre interactive stuff -- it gives them permission to be freer -- but most people, it seems, want formulaic experiences. They like dancing at sound camps, intoxication, and riding around on art cars in costumes. Which is just a typical Friday night clubbing, only more so.
But rather than criticize them for being unadventurous, let's look at what makes these experiences work. Music was invented a few hundred thousand years ago and there aren't many more direct routes to people's pleasure centers. It's also evergreen; a sound camp can swap DJs every few hours and have a different experience in the same environment.
Complicated art or interactive installations do their thing, but if you have a five ton sculpture that whirls boulders around, well, that's what it does. Rarely can they be as protean as a music hall or a movie house, or your personal computer.
The best you can do is some sort of hardware/software combination, like the Cubatron series, which has had various incarnations as a sort of 3d screen saver build out of LEDs. Syzygryd is an interactive, collaborative music sequencer in the shape of a giant sculpture that lights up and shoots fire.
Perhaps the best urban interactive experiences will be like that -- there might be some expensive hardware built component, but they need to plug into some inexhaustible source of new ideas too.
And what do we get when people show up? People seem to enjoy looking at the bizarre interactive stuff -- it gives them permission to be freer -- but most people, it seems, want formulaic experiences. They like dancing at sound camps, intoxication, and riding around on art cars in costumes. Which is just a typical Friday night clubbing, only more so.
But rather than criticize them for being unadventurous, let's look at what makes these experiences work. Music was invented a few hundred thousand years ago and there aren't many more direct routes to people's pleasure centers. It's also evergreen; a sound camp can swap DJs every few hours and have a different experience in the same environment.
Complicated art or interactive installations do their thing, but if you have a five ton sculpture that whirls boulders around, well, that's what it does. Rarely can they be as protean as a music hall or a movie house, or your personal computer.
The best you can do is some sort of hardware/software combination, like the Cubatron series, which has had various incarnations as a sort of 3d screen saver build out of LEDs. Syzygryd is an interactive, collaborative music sequencer in the shape of a giant sculpture that lights up and shoots fire.
Perhaps the best urban interactive experiences will be like that -- there might be some expensive hardware built component, but they need to plug into some inexhaustible source of new ideas too.