4 iMagazine / April, 2013
What is Interactive Media?
nteractive media authoring is a large part of the world we live in, it is all around us and a great aid to everyday activities. So what is it, how do we get it, why do we need it and what is the technicality of Interactive media? In this article we're going to explore a largely ignored and taken for granted world.
What is Interactive media authoring? Essentially it is a function that is designed to be operated by others, typically said function must be of use. For example, if you go up to a terminal and interact with it by giving input and pressing buttons you are utilising an interactive function that was designed to serve you and be useful based on your input. Briefly speaking Interactive media can be conceived as anything that considers an input and communicates using media assets. So, what are these media assets? How do I know what to look out for? They're the type of assets you see around you everyday which can include (and isn't limited to): Music, images, video, dynamic content (e.g animation, JS page elements) and games in general. There are typical assets that interactive media utilise to be, well, interactive media.
Now that you know the bare bones form of Interactive media let's start talking about how Interactive media is used currently. We live in a very technically sophisticated world and so the simplistic view displayed above is merely a dumbed down presentation to sell a pretty boring subject.
On the modern stage interactive media comes in the form of advertisements, entertainment, websites, and games to name a few. These interactive functions can come in different formats, for example, you may wish to play a game on a touch pad device or on your computer, maybe even your laptop? These devices allow different types of interactivity. This is modern interactive media authoring, there is a generic function that takes a generic input (for example, a mouse click to go somewhere on the screen) this mouse click can now be anything at the hardware level, it could be a genuine mouse click, a touch pad click on a laptop, even a touch screen click or some form of voice command. Take a look at the image below, we'll talk more about it.