For the first project, I had to design two interative art installations and they had to be based on the same intent one of the 3 installations from ReActive I chose. So, to get my creative juices flowing, I thought that perhaps I could watch some movies that are based on human relationships with technology and interaction.

Movies on the list are:
- Bicentennial man (Seen it before but could watch again)
- Metropolis
- A.I.
- Ghost in the shell

Another way was to do research on existing Interactive art. Here are a number of books I borrowed of interactive art from the library:

- Prixars electronica : 2002 CyberArts by Leopoldseder, Hannes.
- Prixars electronica : 2003 CyberArts by Leopoldseder, Hannes.
- Interaction : artistic practice in the network, edited by Amy Scholder with Jordan Crandall.
- Creative code by John Maeda
- Art@science by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau
- Virtual art : from illusion to immersion by Oliver Grau
- The inmates are running the asylum by Alan Cooper
- About face 2.0 : the essentials of interaction design by Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann.

In these books where a huge number of exisiting interactive design projects done by artists all over the world. I started looking at other people's designs and maybe I could think of ideas which were inspired by their work.

On the web I found examples of interaction design projects such as The Narcissist by Abigail Durrant. http://www.okeanos.org.uk/design/interaction/narc.html

Her work was based on works by performance artists in the 1970s who explored how the artist can act as a mirror for their audience. Her idea was to create "an interactive fable for a performance artist" and it looks like a two page book but the little screens on these pages act as a mirror. Vanity Mirror explores how technology, especially video technology, can accentuate our own narcissistic tendencies.

Wouldn't it be interesting if she had incorporated this idea into a story book. Maybe instead of reading the participants eye movement when grooming themselves, the book could project images with every page and a recording of a narrator telling a story. It could be turned into something like a hi tech children's audio book meets "mood ring". But the book projects the reader's emotions evoked by the story onto that image (e.g. sad part of the story, image would start to have blotches of blue emerging on the photo to indicate reader's sadness).

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The sound of music...

Being a huge music lover and ex musician, I know that I definately want a few designs to have something to do with sound or music.

Considerations:

• Allow people to create music (actually create a piece of music using installation?
• Or just noise? Action triggers sound?