Week 3: MMUVA

It's taken a while for me to get to this post, but hopefully I can add some insight to the topic at hand.

Does MMUVA offer a real learning opportunity to school aged children?
I would say so. At this time art and music classes are first on the chopping block when it comes to school funding. This may be the way of the future, combining curriculums to create new ones. Here we see music, art, and technology presented in a fun and entertaining package. One of the big rules that Disney developers follow is that attractions have to be visually appealing and fun right off the bat, otherwise why would people waste their time with it? This project attracts people of all ages because of it's interaction, and then has the capacity to entertain once they're paying attention. What better way to represent a mode change or key change in music, than by adding a video representation as well. As the key changes the colors could change. At the same time different art styles could be substituted for the interaction, so it could be used as an art history tool as well. The clever interface creates a fun user experience.

In what way is the interaction important to the piece and could that interaction be changed or limited in some way?
There would need to be variety in the experience to be a productive tool, and attraction for that matter. People will get bored relatively quickly with the same show over and over. In terms of variations, the core project should stay the same. It's the experience that should change. Different songs, different colors, I would go so far as to say different objects and the possibility of adding 3D objects through stereoscopic glasses.

Who is in control of the work, the author or the audience?
I think the ownership inherently belongs to the author, but control of work varies based on the author and audience. The audience has the power to influence the author, but most of the time the author's actions will be based on their own creative free will. In another sense, is the author really the creator? The author is providing input to the system, but they are not directly deciding on colors and placements. I would like to think of the work as free standing, but as a result of the author and the audience.

What qualities of new media does MMUVA employ and could it be improved in any way?
In terms of qualities, I think the introduction of technology is large part of new media. The interaction method is pushing the envelope in terms of user input. In terms of improvement, I would like to see two things: more input control, and more audience presentation. At this point the input the author provides is not directly related to the work created. While I think this stands as an expression of emotion, I would like the possibility to be there for direct input. Everything is left to interpretation at this point, which for a computer is impossible, so really everything is just following a pre-defined algorithm, so the work provided is constrained to the creativity of the programmer.

In terms of the audience experience, how could spatial audio be implemented? Could mono audio add anything to this? What about multiple projectors, or projections on different surfaces like the floor or ceiling? For that matter how could this work in a CAVE environment?

What type of support material would be useful?
I would think a project press release would be useful. Other than that it's a plug and play system. People really won't understand it until they try it, and at that point you won't know the common questions people will ask. Run a survey along with a public demo for a few weeks to gain different user's common knowledge prior to the experience, then build an informational document to fill in the gaps.