Interactive photography

What is interactive media?

Interactive media is the integration of digital media including combinations of electronic text, graphics, moving images, and sound, into a structured digital computerised environment that allows people to interact with the data for appropriate purposes. That includes art that was created for people to touch, move, listen or other way to interact with it. For my personal experiences these are always one of the most interesting things in the gallery, because viewer is the part of the art.

Interactive photography

Photography can be shown in many ways. It can not only be printed and hang up on the wall as we usually see, but it can also have some different elements to it, which makes people to interact with it. One of the simple and often seen in galleries and exhibitions is having the photo mounted or a screen on the wall and a sound for the images, which often can be heard through headphones. That is the example of how it looks like:

Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko, The same horizon repeated at every moment of the walk

Invisible Time (installation view, detail), 2012

Some other photography installations involve computer program similar to a website where viewer needs to press and choose what he wants to see or to hear. It also can include touch screens or cameras. For example, at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Gallery One there is an interactive wall, where visitors can browse CMA’s collection. It is designed to propel visitors into the galleries by giving them a taste of the objects in the collection and allowing them to create their own customized visit by downloading objects and tours to their iPad.

 

CMA's interactive wall

Portrait Machine

Portrait Machine

Portrait Machine is an interactive photography installation that visualises the connections between visitors. First of all, visitors take an image of themselves in the set-up area, then images go to archive where the machine makes connections between all the people based on a number of features, such as clothing choice, hair colour, facial expression, and composition within the frame. It presents both similarities and differences in these characteristics, reminding us of our connectedness and uniqueness, creating strong visual patterns and playful juxtapositions.

3D holograms are three-dimensional images of the subject, which is seen without the aid of special glasses or other intermediate optics. There are many videos on YouTube how to make these at home just by the use of smartphone, CD case and some other items like pen, scissors, knife. That is how the finished 3D hologram looks like:

These are very interesting as it looks like something from the future and it is even possible to make it at home!

Moreover, very simple and often used are interactive books. Especially nowadays when books can be read online, which means that they can include sounds and videos.