As a response to the article "Delusions of Dialogue: Control and Choice in Interactive Art" by Jim Campbell, we (Zaid Edghaim and myself) created what we like to think of as a greed detector. As the user place their hand need the pile on coins on the table, an alarm and projection of flashing colours are start to deter people from moving closer.
We wanted to created a piece that bring back the reminder that greed is present in life and it's something that you need to be aware of while moving forward. We don't tell the user "Greed is bad" or "You should not take more than you need" but instead allow the user to take away what they will. If they react to the piece as afraid of going too close to the money after the alarm has played once, than they will be remind that they need to leave what is not rightfully theirs alone. If someone is not deterred from taking from the pile than they feel greed and taking for yourself is fine and everyone else around them will realize this about that person as well.
The interface is the pile of coins that acts as a capacitor. Money is, in the modern world, the element of determining the concept of "survival of the fittest" and would therefore bring up the notion of "more is better" for people encouraging them to reach out for it. It is connected to an Arduino that measures the level of the capacitor at any moment. If there is more than the given number, then the program in processing is triggered to display the output (alarm/colours).
It is a discrete form of input. The user thinks that they are interacting with the coins and it just knows how close the hand is to it, when it really is just reading the numbers that is controlled discretely by the user. It is an on or off system (either too close or at a safe distance). The piece does not allow for a wide range of control from the user. Yes, they control precisely the number being read by the computer, but the computer only reacts if that number is between one range.
Transforming Greed is a piece utilizing the computer to read input from user's interaction with an interface, converting that to a number, which as a result produces a visual/audio output. This output will as ct as a reminder to the user to be more away of their actions and if what they are doing is actually right.
