Abstract

Introduction

Multi-media communication rests on the premise that both sides, transmitter and receiver, use computers. Students learning new types of communication should cultivate their ability to create and comprehend expressions using media technology. We developed a course and toolkits for training their expressive capability. Sensing human actions is a key technical factor for creating interactive works in the field of media art and design. This course using these toolkits enables students to create an interactive installation easily and learn how to interrelate the response by sensing human actions.

Objectives

Our study aims to develop a course for education on media art and design in a society infiltrated by media technology; this course has the same intention as the Bauhaus’s preliminary course (Vorkurs), which established a new style of creative education in industrialized society in the early twentieth century. The immediate objective is to create a work that reacts interactively with human actions using sensors; the program involved in the work controls graphics, sounds, lights, or motors responding to human actions. One work is comprised of three elements: human actions, input from sensors, and response. It is not just a converter from input to output and not a transmitter to convey a certain message in a specific context. The interaction transforms the normally recognized pre-established signification into a new perceptual relationship. The course enhances students’ ability to manipulate media technology. This course addresses not only limited fields like product design or contemporary art, but also broad fields involved with the creative exploitation of media technology beyond existing media frames.

Taeko Ariga (Japan) Biography
Department of Information & Media, Doshisha Women’s College
Koichi Mori (Japan) Biography
Department of Information & Media, Doshisha Women’s College

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