Let me share a response to Brandon, because it may be more broadly useful. :)
I introduced the notion “responsive media”
after making the Gardens as prototype examples of what I called playspaces,
refusing to call them
interactive spaces (refusing Shannon telementationalist turn-taking),
or ambiente intelligente, (there is no intelligence “in the world” any more than there are numbers “in the world")
or immersive environments (we are always and everywhere immersed)
I formed the Topological Media Lab in 2001 to study gesture and movement from
experiential as well as computational perspectives, using what I called "responsive media."
The touchstone models for responsive media were / are:
a pool of water,
a resonant violin (not a piano),
clay or dough.
This blurb about Responsive Media Research at the TML described it pretty well:
