You can spend days looking for creative inspiration online, hell, probably months or even years. There’s so much out there. Set your StumbleUpon to ‘arts’ and fire away, you will never get done.

But what do you do with this inspiration? Does it really motivate you to think more creatively yourself? The most it could really accomplish is that you might feel more motivated to get more work done, or to work more efficiently, but there are many other ways to do this.

Forget the internet for a while, and set your eyes on some real inspiration that may not have been purposefully designed.

Find old books, go to the library or a bookshop, and take a look at what people used to think and draw and create years ago. I have this magnificent book filled with what were then futuristic looking spaceships from the 70′s. Those designs look ridiculous now, but just thinking about how that artist must have been thinking while creating those designs gets my synapses firing wildly.

Take a look at the outside world. Nature, the design of the city or town you live in, or a neighboring city, or a far away city. There’s a reason many great creative works have been made after traveling to far away places. Opening your mind really gets those inspirational juices flowing.

Look for inspiration in your friends, your family, your enemies, strangers even. Look at how they dress, how they act, what they do with their lives. If art imitates life, then a better understanding of how life works, how people work, will surely lead to a better understanding of how your art should work.

And lastly, take an introspective look at yourself. Why do you do what you do? What is the real source of your creativity? Understanding yourself is essential to understanding your creativity.

Inspiration is not looking at other artworks and saying “huh, cool!” Inspiration is the fuel to your creative process, it can come from the outside, it can come from the inside, it can come from other artworks, but it doesn’t have to. It is different for everyone, and if you want your artworks to be of higher quality, you’d better figure out what really inspires you.

Now it’s time to show you some examples of interactive art, so you can get an idea of what others have done with the medium. Some of these are done by professional artists, some by kids in basements, some you can play around with right here in your browsers, and others were one time installations in countries you’ve never heard of.

All are totally rad.

Descriptions are ripped straight from their respective websites or whatever other source is appropriate, with some editing if necessary.

The Graveyard:

The Graveyard is a very short computer game designed by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It’s more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with realtime poetry, with storytelling without words.

My opinion: While it might seem like The Graveyard isn’t very interactive at all, it is a perfect example of how even a little interactivity can really create a different experience. By literally placing yourself in the shoes of the old lady you experience her story directly, and you will remember that story even after you walk out of The Graveyard.

Façade:

Façade is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic narrative – an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyper-linked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

My opinion: Pay good attention kids, this thing might’ve been made in 2005, but it signals the future of interactive storytelling. Couple the software behind this with some accurate speach recognition and fancy 3d graphics and we’re one step closer to the holodeck.

PainStation:

The PainStation is an arcade cabinet which gives two players the opportunity of playing a specially adapted and expanded variant of the classic video game, Pong, against each other. The electronic controls are connected by digital transducers to several components providing sensory feedback to players. During the game, the players place their left hands on the PEU (Pain Execution Unit) which serves as a sensor and feedback instrument. Possible feedback effects are heat impulses, an electric shock and an integrated miniature wire whip. The feedback generated is dependent on the playing process and can increase in its intensity. The respective opponent can try to alter his or her playing style to purposely change the intensity of the feedback.

My opinion: I had the pleasure of ‘engaging’ with the PainStation back in 2005 at a Dutch arts & technology festival called Robodock (which I believe is currently dormant until further notice), and unfortunately for the person I was playing against  I was pretty good at it too. Not only is it pretty fun (because pain can be hilarious) but it also gives the term “visceral game experience” a whole new meaning.

I Fell in Love With the Majesty of Colors:

“(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors” is a pixel-horror game that puts the player behind the tentacles of a titanic, writhing sea creature. It’s a tale of love, loss, and balloons with five different endings. Will you befriend the humans or fight them? The choice is up to you.

My opinion: Another great example of how Flash games don’t always have to hold to the regular ‘game’ conventions. Although this work contains quite some text, the poetry is all in the interactivity it offers and the choices you can make with it. You can find more information on the creator’s site.

Dyson:

Dyson is an ambient real-time strategy game with abstract visuals. Remotely command semi-autonomous self-replicating mining machines to take over an entire asteroid belt. The original game was made in one month for the TIGSource Procedural Generation competition. Much of the game’s content is procedurally generated. We are entering Dyson into this year’s IGF! Wish us luck!

My opinion: This one can be considered the most game-like of all items on this list except for the PainStation, but even so the ambience and mood make it much more of a meditative experience than a game.

Reaction Machine

Reaction Machine from jonash on Vimeo

Reaction Machine is an open system, in which the visitor’s reaction determines the art work. In the Reaction Machine different kinds of technologies are combined in one object, a television screen is combined with an old rusty gear wheel and a handle, all connected to a computer with a webcam, microphone and speakers. When a visitor sits down, he will see himself and somebody else looking at each other on the television screen. His head is filmed live by a web cam and combined with a recording of somebody else. As soon as he starts to turn the handle the video recording of the other person starts to play. After watching the video the visitor is asked to record himself. If he now keeps turning the wheel, he will be recorded. In the end of his recording his movie will be mirrored and the next visitor can watch and react on his recording. In this way people can play with the machine, discover its function, react on each other, sometimes in a direct and expressive way, sometimes in a intimate and exploratory way and sometimes in a way telling each other stories.

My opinion: I got a Max/MSP workshop from the guy that made Reaction Machine some years ago, and while his teaching abilities weren’t exactly, well… good, the guy definitely knew what he was doing with the software, and showed some cool examples of what he did with it. This was one of my favorites.

If there are any other cool interactive artworks you’ve come across, know about, or have been a part of, don’t hesitate to drop a comment and let the rest of us know about it.