Digital Arts and Interaction (Invited)


Abstract
This SIG proposal, sponsored by the CHI Design
Community, looks at the intersection and cross-
fertilization between HCI, and Digital and Performance
Arts. We consider how the exploration of engaging and
meaningful artistic experience can further push the
boundaries of HCI research and practice and how tool
use and models of evaluation can be explored to assist
the development of creative enterprises. We consider
how artists’ early experiments with technology can
inform mainstream design thinking, and how theories
and practice in aesthetics can feed into User
Experience.
Keywords
Digital Art, Performance Art, Collaboration, Action
research
ACM Classification Keywords
H.1.2. User/Machine Systems.
General Terms
Human Factors, Design
Introduction
Artists have been involved in interactive electronic
media from Stockhausen [14] with electronic music
through to David Rokeby’s Very Nervous System –
based on computer vision [10]. And as with other walks
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2011, May 7–12, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
ACM 978-1-4503-0268-5/11/05.
David England
School of Computing and Maths
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK
d.england@ljmu.ac.uk

Ernest Edmonds
Creativity and Cognition Studios
University of Technology, Sydney
NSW 2007 Australia
ernest@ernestedmonds.com

Jennifer G. Sheridan
BigDog Interactive Ltd.
London E2 7BB, UK
jennifer@bigdoginteractive.com

Scott Pobiner
Parsons The New School for
Design, New York, NY, USA
scott@scottpobiner.com


Nick Bryan-Kinns
School of Electronic Engineering
and Computer Science,
Queen Mary, University of
London, London. E1 4N
nickbk@eecs.qmul.ac.uk

Peter Wright
School of Computing Science,
Newcastle University,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
P.C.Wright@ncl.ac.uk

Michael Twidale
Graduate School of Library and
Information Science, University
of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61820
twidale@illinois.edu

Carla Diana
Smart Design, 601 W. 26 Street
Suite 1820, New York, NY 10018
carla@carladiana.com
CHI 2011 • SIG May 7–12, 2011 • Vancouver, BC, Canada
609

of life, interactive digital media has become part of the
mainstream of artistic production and performance.
More recently there have been some attempts to
formalize the working relationship between art and
technology. Thus there are a number of New Media Art
institutes such as V2 in Rotterdam. There are also a
number of new media art festivals such as Ars
Electronica (www.aec.at) in Linz. Academically, Candy
and Edmonds [5] documented initial approaches to art-
technology collaborations. The EPSRC LeonardoNet
network (www.leonardonet.org) brought together
technologists and arts and humanities researchers to
develop a landscape document for interdisciplinary
work. Art has also been used to explain HCI to the
general public [8]. Within the CHI community the
recent workshop in SIGCHI 2007 examined
Methodology and Evaluation in HCI and New Media Arts
[1]. And in 2010 Cockton et al [6] asked how the Arts
and Humanities could engage with HCI.

Within the CHI community, there has been a long-
standing concern with the area. For example see
Buxton and Dannenberg’s paper in CHI86 [4] or
Schiphorst et al’s paper in CHI94 [15]. In particular,
members of the CHI community started the “Creativity
and Cognition” conference series in 1993 [7]. All of
these meetings have included contributions from both
CHI researchers and new media artists. Every
conference includes an art exhibition. The key
questions that have been addressed fall into three
categories. What can we learn from artists about
computer support for creativity? What new
developments in digital and performance art can CHI
research enable? What can we learn about creative
collaboration from artist/computer scientist teams? In
2006 many members of the CHI community concerned
with creativity came together at an NSF workshop to
discuss creativity support tools. The resulting paper
reviews the state-of-the-art and, in particular, the
special issues surrounding evaluation in this context
[16]. Between 1997 and 2002, a series of UK EPSRC
projects studied artists collaborating with computer
scientists [2]. The recent workshop in SIGCHI 2007
examined Methodology and Evaluation in HCI and New
Media Arts [6], and in 2010 Cockton et al [5] asked
how the Arts and Humanities could work with the CHI
community.

The rapid uptake and use of digital technology to
explore live performance and engage with audiences
worldwide has led to researchers integrating
performance theory into HCI. Previous performance and
computing collaborations, particularly in choreography,
music and dance, suggest that drawing on performance
knowledge is essential for the creation of new design
thinking and practices. Researchers are investigating
the multiple the features of digital performance,
including: orchestration mixed-reality experiences;
interaction as performance; how spectators become
performers and, narrative trajectories An emerging field
of research that sits at the intersection of computing,
performance and HCI is Digital Live Art [12]. Digital
Live Art brings in to question how we design for, and
support interaction, which is not conventionally task-
based and routine, but experimental, improvisational
and fleeting. An important feature of Digital Live Art is
that it is often performed by non-professional
performers, which makes it an ideal domain for
exploring the issues of designing Digital Art for public
use beyond the traditional Computer Science and HCI
repertoire. The growing number of conferences and
events focusing on the performative aspects of
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