# Button-based interaction, amplified interaction, and Mobile Jockey

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/button-based-interaction-amplified-interaction-and-mobile-jockey
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-02-08

## Summary

This 2025 note examines how much a simple button can carry: holding adds duration, sequences add relations, and several buttons can each address a screen, subsystem or agent, letting attention govern how surrounding screens develop. Jeanyoon Choi proposes Mobile Jockey or iPad Jockey, an array of touch controls mapped to an array of devices, closer to conducting than selecting. Citing Tone Ladder at Dark Matter, Vincent Morisset's Bell Orchestre: Sound House and Ragnar Kjartansson's The Visitors, he aims for presses that start evolving systems, and links this to amplified interaction.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 버튼 누르기와 길게 누르기 같은 단순한 상호작용을 확장해, 터치 화면의 컨트롤 배열로 여러 기기를 지휘하는 '모바일 자키' 개념과 증폭된 상호작용을 제안한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Mobile Jockey**: An interaction in which an array of controls on a phone or tablet addresses a corresponding array of devices, letting a participant conduct an audiovisual sequence across a space.
- **Amplified interaction**: The pleasure and sense of agency produced when a small bodily action acquires a larger presence across a space.

## Questions this answers

### What is Mobile Jockey in Jeanyoon Choi's work?

Mobile Jockey, or iPad Jockey, is Choi's proposal for an array of controls on a touch surface that addresses a corresponding array of devices, so sliding or using several fingers creates an audiovisual sequence distributed through space, closer to conducting than selecting.

### How can a single button create richer interaction?

In 'Button-based interaction, amplified interaction, and Mobile Jockey', Jeanyoon Choi notes that holding a button adds duration and a continuous value, sequences add relations, and a press can start an evolving system rather than just trigger an output, as when a video plays while pressed in Passage of Water.

Topics: button-based interaction, amplified interaction, multi-device web artwork, conducting, audiovisual composition, interaction design

References: Passage of Water (Yiyun Kang), Tone Ladder, Dark Matter (Berlin), Vincent Morisset, Bell Orchestre: Sound House, Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors (Ragnar Kjartansson)

## Full text

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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Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.