Get Interactive With Your Art

If you’ve read my about page or some of my other articles you might know that during my time at the Utrecht School of the Arts I studied Design for Virtual Theatre and Games, which is really just a fancy name for “we lure you in with games, but you’re really going to be working with interactive theater.” As I’ve said before, I wasn’t entirely happy with what the school had to offer me, so I quit. It did open my eyes to the magical awesomeness of interactive arts, however, and now I’d like to open your eyes too.

I can tell from personal experience and observation that amateur digital artists tend to experiment with different media. They like to play around with all the software they can get their hands on to see what works best for them. So even if we only settle for one particular medium, whether it’s illustration, animation, 3d modeling, or anything else, we tend to have at least some experience with other forms of digital art. Sometimes we get lucky and/or smart and meet or seek other people to combine powers, and go all multidisciplinary on everyone’s asses. This means making music for someone’s video, video for someone’s music, assets for a game, and all other kinds of combinations. Sometimes we like to make that mix ourselves, which is ok too. But there’s one combo that I find to be the ultimate combo, can you guess which one?

Interactively Active

I like interactive arts not just because they pretty much require at least some knowledge of a variety of media, but mostly because, while a good painting or film might speak to you, interactive artworks give you the ability to talk back. The idea of really engaging with a piece of art, the notion of being a part of the artwork just really appeals to me. Combining your potential powers of illustration, animation, sound, storytelling and whatever other skills you might have with the magic of interactivity can really create some interesting results. What is also great is that interactivity in art in this form is fairly young, so there is a lot more for you to discover and reveal to the world, and there are many cool things to be done that haven’t been done before. Because it also combines a multitude of disciplines, there’s a lot more room for real originality.

One thing that does make interactive art seem a bit intimidating is that it adds quite a bit of complexity to the equation. A lot of times some knowledge of coding is required, or desired to achieve the results you want. Visual artists don’t tend to be fans of programming, but there’s always solutions to that, as usual. I’ve met artists who just combine their powers with someone with technical knowledge. I find collaboration an excellent way to achieve projects you can’t achieve by yourself. Besides that, you can always just toughen up and learn to code a little, it isn’t always that hard, and there are ways to make it easier on yourself. Even a simple amount of interactivity can be really cool. From games to weird experiments, interactivity can really broaden your creative horizons.

So how can you actively hop on the interactive bandwagon?

With some of the ways I’m going to list now, in no particular order.

Because I believe action should come before inspiration from similar or related works, I am going to show you all these possibilities first, in the hopes that you will experiment. I will show you some awesome examples of interactive arts in a later post.

Ways You Can Make Interactive Artworks and Stuff

• Flash.Ever heard of it? I hear some people make games and websites with this. Apparently you can animate with it and it has some kind of script full of action, but it’s the third script. They also have a second script. What? Oh yeah, the Flash plugin is installed on pretty much every computer built since 1972, so you’ve got quite audience there. ActionScript is pretty easy to use, and fairly powerful if applied well. One potential problem is the price, which is probably a buttload more than you can afford if you really are an amateur, and as you may have heard, I’m not really a fan of piracy.

• Game making software and game SDKs. Games are probably the most prolific and awesome form of interactive art that currently exists, and it’s pretty fun to make them too. Software such as Game Maker (originally developed at my university ) and Multimedia Fusion allow you to do quite a lot of playing around with your game making dreams. Besides that, game engines, game engine SDKs and game mod tools can let you do a lot more than just create levels. I’ve attempted to make somewhat interactive machinima with Valve’s Source SDK before, and while it wasn’t all easy, the results were quite awesome. Always remember that anything you can use to make games you can also use to create other kinds of interactive experiences.

• Blender. The 3d software package of choice for all amateurs, and not just because it’s free. Blender has had it’s own game development possibilities for a while now, and a little knowledge of Python can get you a long way.

• Max and/or Pure Data. The software of choice for many interactive performances. These are basically graphical programming languages that allow you to let many different sources of input interact with each other by linking objects together. Combined with an Arduino board you can extend your interactivity way beyond the screen/speakers. Pure Data is totally free, Max is far from it.

• Processing. Processing is a programming language you non-coders will love. It is specifically designed for the electronic arts and visual design communities, and makes learning fun by rewarding you with some of that precious instant visual gratification. Processing also allows you to take advantage of that Arduino magic.

• Go old school and make an interesting narrative experience with plain ol’ HTML. There’s actually quite a lot of stuff on hypertext fiction out there, so go do some research if this speaks to you. Some consider it a dead medium, but those people are idiots. There’s no such thing as a dead medium. I bet you could come up with some interesting new things if you like the idea of interactive fiction.

• Go even older school and get your electronics groove on. Making simple robots isn’t all that complex these days, you can even use Lego.  If this appeals to you, do some research, there has been some amazing work done with robotic arts, and there is a lot more to be done, perhaps by you. Just don’t make robots that play the guitar or the drums… I’ve already seen too many of those.

That’s about all I can think of now. Don’t hesitate to let me know if I’ve missed anything, that’s what the comment form is for.

Also, if you have already played around with interactive arts, or would like to know a little bit more, I’d really like to hear from you. The contact form on my about page is open during regular office hours, and every other hour of every day.