Art Game: An Early Design from the Office of Charles & Ray Eames
A formerly secret IBM-funded research project 0f 1978 was the earliest interactive design in arts education and was among the last and least known projects from the legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames. The game led viewers to recognize the styles of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters through random selection, simple interactions, and feedbacks ranging from “good guess” to “no way” for the response to a given work in a given artist being studied. A fascinating project from the dawn of interactive design and IA, the Art Game employed a combination of systematic structure with a hand-crafted behind-the-scenes information architecture to the traditionally “soft” subject of art connoisseurship. Never published until recently, this approach may inspire new applications in other areas involving visual discrimination and recognition.
