Smart Materials: When Art Meets Technology

In this chapter, we will present our approach for the development of young artists. We describe how we helped them to discover new expression methods and methodology. We guided them through the smart material jungle with Arduino as lantern. We will describe the application and use of smart material interfaces (SMIs) in the context of artistic installations. SMIs are interfaces that make use of smart materials and the possibility of changing their physical properties to create interaction. We organised an intensive workshop in the Fine Art Academy of Venice. The students, divided into groups, produced interactive creative works based on cheap traditional materials enhanced with the properties of smart materials. Our idea was to use new materials to augment the degree of freedom of expressivity of traditional media. Through this experience, the budding artists had the possibility to learn new technology and techniques for creating fun new interaction by surprising and amazing the user in unexpected ways. The experience itself stood for a growing point of the students, and it allowed them to give life to their static works. Also, the possibility of augmenting objects with new properties allowed them to convey emotion and feelings, not just information.