Nature as interface
Jay Silver · 2009
What do you get when you cross MacGyver with Martha Stewart? Inventions made of magic markers, chewed bubble gum, flowers, friends, and rainwater! More importantly, you get a person who knows how to work with her environment. In this paper I'll introduce an experimental framing for a new class of interfaces which consist of Nature itself. I'll call people interconnectors instead of "users/producers," and I'll call the things they make interducts instead of "products." Then, I'll talk concretely about Drawdio and Twinkle: two working prototypes (which I created) that let interconnectors create musical inventions by improvising with Nature. Finally, I'll propose some future work and describe the performance I will give (live at Creativity and Cognition) which demonstrates all these ideas.