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Jeanyoon Choi (b.1999) is a Computational Artist researching in interconnectivity and complexity through Multi-Device Web Artworks.

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jeanyoon.ch@oi /oi % cat button-based-interaction-amplified-interaction-and-mobile-jockey

Button-based interaction, amplified interaction, and Mobile Jockey

2025-02-08

A simple interaction can contain more than it first appears to. A button seems to provide one bit: on or off. Several buttons add combinations and categories, but merely assigning an output to each click is still a limited proposition.

Holding a button adds duration. A participant now produces both a boolean state and a continuous value. Sequences of presses add further relations. The interface has to communicate that holding is possible, otherwise this dimension remains inaccessible.

A direct example is a video that plays while pressed, as in Passage of Water. A more open version starts a system evolving. Moving the finger while holding could alter how it evolves rather than merely start or stop it.

With several buttons, each can address a screen, subsystem or agent. Pressing gives one part attention; releasing suspends it. The surrounding screens begin in darkness and develop at different rates according to the participant’s distribution of attention. A competitive relation can emerge between the channels.

This leads to Mobile Jockey or iPad Jockey. An array of controls on a touch surface addresses a corresponding array of devices. Sliding across the controls creates an audiovisual sequence distributed through space. Multiple fingers allow simultaneous activation, turning the interface into something closer to conducting than selecting. A mouse-based version would require a different interaction design.

References include Tone Ladder at Dark Matter, Vincent Morisset’s Bell Orchestre: Sound House, and the noninteractive ensemble of Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors. What interests me is the relation between separate musical or audiovisual parts and the larger composition they make together.

I want to extend that relation beyond triggering tones. Each press could initiate an evolving system. The participant would conduct how those systems proceed, pause and encounter one another, allowing more conceptual depth than a bank of sound buttons.

This also returns to amplified interaction: the pleasure of a small bodily action acquiring a larger presence across a space, and the sense of agency that amplification can produce.

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