My thoughts on the Design for Interaction project

We have just looked at the Prado Museum in Google Earth. They have scanned all the paintings at a very high resolution, so that you can virtually tour the gallery, and look at the paintings from anywhere in the world.
I find this fascinating, as a photograph, is traditionally interactive anyway. A person has to go to a gallery, and look at the photographs. This would usually then create a thought, or an opinion on the painting. This is how I felt when I first read the design for Interactivity brief. I thought of a truly basic form of interaction; a conversation. Someone talks to you, you take in this information, think about it, and then respond. This all happens so naturally now, that we don't even think about it.
I wanted to make the initial interaction process even slower, by thinking of how a conversation for example would have taken place before the telephone, i.e.; by letter. You would write your thoughts down on a piece of paper, and send it. The recipient would read the letter, form a response in their minds, and then put this down on paper, before sending it back.
I wanted to combine this traditional form of conversation, with photographs instead of words, and then create a virtual gallery that anyone could view, and contribute to. I also wanted to combine this with more modern interactive methods, such as by sending the letter via email, and having the gallery of photographs online.
I wanted it to be accessible to everyone, so sent a letter out to everyone I knew on Facebook, encouraging them to send me a photograph, and then to send the letter on to people they knew, who could then also send me a photograph, and be involved.
However, I think people have a real dislike to emails that are sent to multiple recipients, and in a way, I think it lost the qualities I wanted to have with sending a letter, the personal quality, that you believe that this letter has only been sent to you.
I then looked at the idea of a 'message in a bottle', or a 'message tied to a balloon'. The idea of sending a small message off, out into the world, with no idea where it will end up, or if anyone will ever receive it. I think it would be the excitement of finding this message, of coming across this by chance that would be of interest, and would perhaps make you want to get involved.
I thought of how I could do this virtually to, by making a 'virtual balloon' that would fly around the Internet, floating on currents etc. I thought of the idea of making this into a 'pop-up' until I saw all the comments on how annoying pop-ups were and all the software you could download to block them.
I found that it was difficult to get a balance between interaction in the traditional sense, and combining this with interactive technology.