While reading “NeMe: Trouble at the Interface 2.0” by Erkki Huhtamo, I was reminded of a sort of exhibit/attraction I’ve been to up in Spring Green, Wisconsin called The House on the Rock. It’s a very large place that is essentially just a bunch of really cool artwork and artifacts that a very eccentric man collected and left behind. One of the ‘galleries’ was long sort of museum full of huge music machine displays. Each one was an impressive sight of it’s own, and reading about the different interactive art pieces and what defined them reminded me of these music machines. In the video below quite a few of them are demonstrated.

I’d consider these pieces interactive art because of the fact that they don’t really come to life until you prompt them, by inserting a token or pressing a button. That combined with simply being such an active piece (involving mechanical movement, music, and aesthetic) I think would make it a candidate. What they may lack, however, is a concept or meaning other than “because I could, it’s fun, and it looks and sounds nice”, while a lot of the pieces in the article seem to have something thought provoking about them.