My goal for this project was to make modern art more accessible, and to integrate touch into the 'viewing' of artwork. The user can touch certain parts of the painting I created in order to activate a program on Makey Makey which tells the user more about the artwork, the artist, and gives suggestions and prompts which would ideally help the user connect with the painting.
Makey Makey was one of the first technologies that we explored in Interactive Exhibit Design, and I was drawn to it because of its easy to understand functionality, combined with its seemingly limitless applications. It was one of the modules in class that I felt comfortable exploring further. I was also drawn to the low tech elements of the class, such as the cardboard creations in the beginning, and the paper portion near the end. After reading though a book on how 'tinkerer's' turn low tech material into interactive creations, I was inspired to do the same with modern art.
I chose modern art for two main reasons. The first, and most important, reason was because modern art is often considered the most inaccessible and misunderstood. The second, was because I knew I could re-create a version of some modern art pieces myself, which was crucial for incorporating the conductive paint. I chose to focus on the work of Piet Mondrian, as many of his works involve solid black lines, and boxes of colour.
After I settled on this idea I spent a lot of time thinking over exactly how I wanted to execute my project before I painted anything. I tried to think about the functionality of the project, and if it would work in an art gallery. I strove for elegance and function in the design, which meant I needed to hide the Makey Makey wires and encorporate the ground wire into the interactive experience. I did this in a few ways. First, I applied the black conductive paint at the corners and edges of my painting so that it ran over the edge of the canvas, and onto the back of the frame. These sections were at the best location to attach the wires as I could hid them behind the canvas. For the ground wire, I drilled a hole in a plastic paint palette and put a copper fastener through the hole where a person's thumb would naturally rest. I wrapped the bottom of the fastener around the ground wire, and made sure to use a long wire so that the user had range and mobility. I also made sure that the palette was ambidextrous, so it could be used by anybody comfortably. Because I had a paint palette incorporated into the project, I decided to try and make a conductive paintbrush so that the user could "paint" the art and activate the program. I did this by coating the bristles of a brush in the conductive paint, and replacing the plastic handle with a piece of copper pipe. Finally, I created a stand out of scrap cardboard so that the painting would stand on its own, and the user could touch and explore it without having to lay it down or prop it up themselves. After I created the painting and made sure the conductive aspects were working, I began creating the program elements.
I used the "scratch" program created by Makey Makey to create a customized program which would interact with my work of art. I found 'scratch' extremely easy to use in most respects, although the programming portion of this assignment still took some time because I had to do research to develop my content, explore the 'scratch' program, and figure out how to best execute the interactive elements. I considered incorporating sound into my program, and even attempted to include it in my code, but after trying a few different ways I decided to only use written words. I chose to do this because I knew that my project was something a lot of people would want to touch, and most would not want to wait and listen for each module. This would have been confusing, and the messages would have overlapped.
The final result worked very well! It was fairly easy to make, and now that the program has been saved, it would be simple to re-purpose the code for other works of art. Conductive paint can also be made in different tints, so many different paintings can be made interactive. Because the project can be put together inexpensivly, and fairly easily, I think that this concept would be an effective project for kids and family programs in art galleries. It would make the artwork in the gallery more accessible to children and families, and educate the community on visual art by allowing them to acctually try creating it themselves.
I did run into some issues throughout the course of developing my project. I discovered that the 'non-conductive' paint I used for the rest of my painting was in fact slightly conductive, which caused the six separate interactive sections I had created out of the BARE (conductive) paint to be limited to four. This was fine for this project, but in the future I would have thoroughly tested my paints for conductivity, and ensured that I was using complelty separate brushes for my conductive paint to avoid possible overlap. I also found that the BARE paint was sensitive, and responded somewhat erratically when it was touched. I noticed that it only really did this at the end of my project, when some of the paint was starting to wear away under the alligator clips. I also noticed that this increased when I used a conductive paintbrush I fashioned out of copper pipe and conductive paint. The paintbrush itself did not work as well as I had hoped it would. I think that because there were so many different connections in the brush between the painting and the user's hand, the programs reaction was slow and unpredictable. The program worked much better if the user touched the conductive elements with their hand. Finally, the only issue I had with 'scratch' was that it did not allow me to get very creative with my content. I did my best, and used multiple images and talking icons, but if I had time I would have liked to try a more sophisticated programming system.
Overall I am proud of the work that I did for this project, and the final product. I feel that with some development and time, this could turn into something that I might implement in future museums. This is a project that could be done in a kids program, and it could be applied to a wide range of visual artwork.
Images and design prototype for interactive modern art project interpretation and supply list included. All photos, videos, and documents in this repository are copyrighted under CC-BY license. Copyright Paige Linner, 2017.