Flood
by Mary Lucking

This piece was made as a response to a proliferation of "interactive" art pieces, where the actual audience participation involved nothing more than pushing buttons to start a series of events.
Flood reverses that interaction, asking the audience to press the button, temporaraly stopping the machine, and helping to stem the flow of scribbled-on paper. The action of pressing the button is reminiscent of the story of the Dutch Boy sticking his finger in the dike to stop the flood: of some value, but ultimately futile.

I have also made a web version based on the same idea: Press the Button

Flood is very simple, technically. It is run by a Basic Stamp feeding the the motors random numbers, and the paper is fed by parts of an old printer. Pressing the button stops all the motors, rendering the machine temporarily lifeless and silent.