CONTEXT

The interactive was initially installed at the Spirit of Silicon Valley exhibition at the Tech Museum of Innovation, but the design is easily repurposed and has been ported to mobile devices, displayed at several conferences and installed at other museums since its initial debut. The team approached the interactive with the intention of creating an experience that encourages playful exploration with a minimal interface and little guidance or explicit instructions about what to do.

A substantial part of the reward of the experience is simply touching or moving fingers across the interface in different combinations and discovering new and lovely generative results. Our goal was to find a simple mode of expression, reminiscent of when we first started to draw with finger-paints as a preschooler. The interactive captures this nascent sense of creativity and then extends it into a new media, one that is immediately shared with a community.

IMPACT

Infinite Creativity has taken on a life of its own since its debut in 2010 and we continue to get requests for new installations. We attribute its popularity to how it brings people together and generates inspiration. A staff member at the Tech Museum had this to say about the project: “My only complaint about Infinite Creativity is that it's TOTALLY ADDICTIVE. I blame this on its paradoxical pairing of creative control and continual novelty with guaranteed beauty and incidental relaxation. Whatever the reasons, every time I go into the gallery, some staff member is Zenning out with it.”

CRAFT

Interactive media with a focus on user-generated content drives this experience. We approach our interactive concepts and creations from the standpoint of an audience—what will pique curiosity, engage, entertain, in the most direct and beautiful way? This project was based on a simple concept—everyone has the potential to be creative and technology can help unlock the power of expression.

The interactive borne from these fundamental ideas is a digital painting tablet with a surprising palette of options and an interface simple enough for anyone to use. The creations are broadcast to a shared, scrolling screen, where they join the work of other visitors to create a constantly-evolving, time-based stream of collective art. Through this engaging experience, visitors learn that technology can be used to express creativity, collaborate with others, and share their ideas.