I'm writing this down because I want to remember this. There is a Canadian artist named Max Dean who is an artist that I learned of from an article in the Globe and Mail that I did not save. Max Dean makes interactive scupture but not the sort that normally makes one recoil just upon hearing that the work is 'interactive'. From the projects that I read of in the Globe article, it sounds like he is working at a level of art and technology in which results can almost be perceived as magical: a chair that falls apart and self assembles, a hologram of a man's face (Dean's) that faces the viewer and mimics the viewers facial expressions...

I think my favourite work of his has to be "The Table Childhood"
The Table: Childhood is a collaborative work by Max Dean and Raffaello D’Andrea that was shown in the Arsenale section at the 2001 Venice Biennale. This fully autonomous robotic table selects a viewer and then attempts to form a relationship with that person. In this installation, Max Dean and Raffaello D’Andrea orchestrate a scenario where a spectator, selected by the table, becomes a performer and is not only an “object” of the table’s attention, but also of the other viewers’. Although the table tries to persuade the visitor to interact with it, the visitor must decide whether or not to commit to the piece

I don't know exactly why this strikes me as so poignant.