What constitutes an interaction and a context is abstract, but closely approaches the concept of medium and its content or message. Diverse contexts can establish different interactions, as the reverse is also valid, but certainly solicits a more lucid perspective on this issue. Indeed, the context is everywhere people exist and interact, as interaction can define a new interaction. How people live, their interaction is a context. These interactions, often perceived as natural, are rather defined by the elements that compose one’s environment like a context can only be defined through a specific setting. However, these elements are static and passive, compared to another dynamic and active part of interaction, human. This is indeed reminiscent of “dialectic.” Contradictory elements interact and accumulate to elucidate a context. This interactive art thus explores and examines the dialectics between an active being and a passive object to mediate a context. In this expression, the passive object serves as a medium of memory, which accumulates interactions. Although perceived passive, this "Abstract Object’s Inner Interaction" is nonetheless the process toward a context, the memory of interactions.

“Mirrory” is an interactive art installation with the metaphor of “context as memory of interactivities.”

The theme, representing my personal expression and exploration, is "Abstract Object’s Inner Interaction." New vision about an abstract medium and how it can interactively be interpreted and expressed as a new context will constitute the main premise of this thesis. Within this notion, the expressive form can be of various types of interactive installation depending on the specific theme of medium. For the current demonstration, the medium of mirror is interacted with the contextual metaphor of people's reflective traces.

As usual the mirror reflects the user in front, however the user will encounter the story of different traces the mirror remembers.

1. Marshall McLuhan's "Essential McLuhan"

- This is a book about McLuhan's vision on media and our everyday life. In this book, he brings up various theories behind the element of media such as the relationship between medium and content and a particular distinction of "cool media," which emphasizes the importance of interactivity.

Although his vision about media might be irrelevant to an Art installation, but his notion about the importance of medium and of content represent the main premise of my context. I want to create a medium, which embodies the content, and a medium that can only be completed through audience's interaction. Furthermore, I want to explore the aggregation of two different mediums, Art and Technology, that becomes one at the point of interaction.

The medium is either spatial or object. People, living in different mediums, indeed implies different contexts. What if human and medium is interchanged? What if human can be assessed through medium? Medium is the message," said Marshall McLuhan. Through this contextual interactive experience, human is the medium, but an object, the mirror, represents the context. What if this objects can remember and embodies our life? Like human body is composed of many abstract spaces and elements, what if this closed-physical objects contain another abstract inner structure, us? This inner structure is now the context, of one person, the medium, undergoes everyday. It remembers and has its own story, which fuels its interaction with different people.
2. Danny Rozin's "Wooden Mirror"

- This is an Interactive Art installation about Danny Rozin. It is a mirror scupltured in wood, but the image shown by this mirror reflects what is in front of this mirror.

This installation efficiently uses camera to capture the image, which is translated to various motors to generate the content of the mirror, the final image. This project is very relevant to my project in the sense that the medium is only completed through audience's participation. My project also takes into account the final imagery that would be as strong as enough to make the audience realize the message.

3. Christian Moeller's "Interactive Mirror"

- This is an interactive art installation, making use of real mirror to express the context of this piece.

This piece consists of three parts.

The first part is the sensing system. A ultrasonic sensor is installed to detect the user’s motion and sends the analog data to a software to control the camera and the graphics.

Secondly, there is a camera hidden to capture the audience. This camera is triggered by the sensor installed on the mirror. Indeed, it is coordinated by the sensor, in terms of capturing and recording.

Lastly, the final part of this project is the generation of “silhouette” image and its projection. This silhouette, resulting from the images captured by the camera, is edited and demonstrated in a meaningful way to enhance this piece’s theme of memory and of connection between people through this mirror. Besides the generation of silhouette, the process also possesses a stage to accumulate the previous images and composes a new image. It is like the process of record the current frame and updates it with the previously accumulated frames. If overlapped, it can show a sense of morphing the time, but instead, different silhouette will be generated in function of various depths, analogous of time.