David England, School of Computing and Maths Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK d.england@ljmu.ac.uk
Jill Fantauzzacoffin Digital Media Department, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia USA jill@gatech.edu
Celine Latulipe Department of Software and Information Systems, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, USA clatulip@uncc.edu
Ernest Edmonds Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology, Sydney NSW 2007 Australia, ernest@ernestedmonds.com
Jennifer G Sheridan Bigdog Interactive, London, 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, UK nickbk@eecs.qmul.ac.uk
Stuart Reeves Horizon Digital Economy Research University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2TU, UK, stuart@tropic.org.uk
Atau Tanaka Director, Culture Lab, King's Walk, Newcastle University, NE1 7RU UK, atau.tanaka@ncl.ac.uk
(Bios and further references of authors)
This community proposal makes the case for a Digital Arts and Interaction Community at SIGCHI. Drawing upon the successful CHI 2011 invited Digital Arts and Interaction SIG as well as the 2011 workshop and exhibition, TheUser in Flux, and over ten consistent years of digital arts paper contributions, this proposal shows how the current activities in digital arts at CHI are integrated within a larger digital arts movement. The benefits of establishing a Digital Arts and Interaction Community include supporting this work within CHI, building connections between this work and work in other subdomains of CHI, and networking to communities and resources currently outside of the CHI community. In turn, CHI researchers would gain alternative insights into the interactive process and interdisciplinary collaboration would be facilitated. A Digital Arts and Interaction Community would give us a platform to build bridges between discourse in other sectors including the larger arts communities, education communities, and funding communities.
Figure 1. Philip Hodgett's light sound structure reacting to changes in ambient light levels at Event One. 1969.
Figure 2. R. John Lansdown rehearsing computer-generated dance notation for choreo-graphy with dancers from the Royal Ballet School, London. 1969.
…experimental research is culturally necessary and serves to transform how to simulate, interact with, and experience the world. - Joel Slayton, Foreword to Stephen Wilson’s Information Arts [1]
The invited Digital Arts and Interaction SIG at CHI 2011 [2] identified and brought together a number of researchers and practitioners whose work is informed by the digital arts. Most described themselves as hybrids between HCI and their home disciplines. These disciplines included digital arts, design, computer science, performance, music, education, arts administration, and science museum exhibition development.
This proposal requests support for the creation of a Digital Arts and Interaction Community as part of the CHI conference and ACM SIGCHI. The digital arts have been part of the CHI program for twenty-five years, gaining critical mass in the 2000s. Since the turn of the millennium, CHI has consistently averaged roughly fifteen art-related papers or exhibitions each year. These contributions cut across sessions such as Performing Arts, Storytelling and Perceptual Crossing, Facebook, Expression and Perception, and Sustainability, for example. And each year brings us new work. The digital arts intersect with traditional CHI topics such as screen-based interaction, embodied interaction, virtual and augmented environments, games, and information visualization. The New Interfaces for Musical Expressions conferences began as a CHI Workshop in 2001 [3] and went on to become the main annual international conference in the area of interactive music with its proceedings archived in the ACM Digital Library.
The digital arts are also featured in the programs of CHI-supported conferences such as TEI, Creativity and Cognition, ACE, NordiCHI, and OzCHI as well as the European conference Interact. However, there exists a largely untapped potential to create deeper and more profound connections between HCI research and the digital arts within CHI, as well as between the digital arts in the CHI community and other communities outside of CHI such as the larger arts communities, education communities, and funding communities. A platform such as a Digital Arts and Interaction Community could enable the resources to organize and provide coherence to these efforts.
Digital technologies and art have been coupled since the early days of digital computing in the 1960s. The figures at the left from Event One, a computer arts exhibition in London in 1969 [4], and the Computer Arts Society,a group also active in London during the 1960s, prefigure ambient displays (Figure 1) and embodied interaction (Figure 2). Artist David Rokeby mastered his practice of embodied interaction in 1986 with his development of Very Nervous System.Very Nervous System invites people to move within their everyday environment. Their movements evoke music from the system (Figure 3), thus exploring the resonant nature of interaction and its ability to create insight into people’s motion in their familiar spaces. Like many digital artists, Rokeby has written extensively on interaction and provides an example of interaction discourse from an alternative perspective. While HCI defines interaction as the “joint performance of tasks by humans and machines”, and related definitions [5], to Rokeby, “A technology is interactive to the degree that it reflects the consequences of our actions or decisions back to us” [6]. In the 1980s, Rokeby came to consider topics HCI researchers in the 2000s have been exploring as part of HCI’s third wave:
The computer as a medium is strongly biased …. Because the computer is purely logical, the language of interaction should strive to be intuitive. Because the computer removes you
from your body, the body should be strongly engaged. Because the computer’s activity takes place on the tiny playing fields of integrated circuits, the encounter with the computer should take place in human-scaled physical space. Because the computer is objective and dis-interested, the experience should be intimate [7].
From this brief discussion we can see evidence of practice-based research similar to that in HCI. Digital artists can prefigure issues in HCI research and engage in discourse from alternative perspectives. There are many other instances of intersections between HCI and the discourse of digital art. The photo essay in the left margin chronicles other examples. Digital artists also invent technologies. Patents held by technological artists are recorded on artsactive.net [8] and include work by digital artists Camille Utterback, a MacArthur fellow, and Jim Campbell.
Figure 3. David Rokeby and Very Nervous System in 1993. Rokeby invented the system in 1986.
. 
Figure 4. Camille Utterback's Text Rain. 1999.
Figure 5. Scattered Light by Jim Campbell. 2010.
Through participating in academic conferences such as CHI and other events that focus on the technologies they themselves are interested in, digital artists gain access to an audience familiar with their technologies. Through CHI, artists learn of technological advances and engage in discourse. Participation in technological development and research also gives artists a career path outside of the commercial art market, an environment many artists do not enjoy.
The proposal co-authors and the 40 or so volunteers who signed up at the CHI2011 SIG would form a nucleus to promote Digital Arts and Interaction activities at CH2012 and beyond. Previous experience by the authors [9, 10] shows how HCI and Digital Arts events can be combined. More specifically we will encourage, though our community networks, CHI submissions that address:
We will also promote CHI2012 workshop submissions, following up on TheUser in Flux workshop at CHI2011 [11] that further explore the interplay between Digital Arts and HCI.
We will hold another SIG session building on the main topics of the CHI2011 SIG and further explore, for example, the issue of collaboration between HCI practitioners and digital artists.
We are planning at least two panel sessions. The first will focus on national and international developments that encourage interdisciplinary work, and we will invite colleagues from the NSF and NEA who have been working on this area [12, 13] to join community members in a discussion. The second panel will engage with the CHI Design Community to discuss the impact of digital arts on design thinking for new forms of interaction.
We intend to re-visit the CHI2010 Atlanta Media Showcase with a new brief for artists to seek to engage with the broader CHI Community, by, for example, promoting interactive performances which encourage “the audience as artists” and thus enable CHI practitioners and researchers to see how their own work can be expressed artistically, as well as observe how artists respond to HCI. We also intend to commission a web-based artwork through which CHI delegates can interact during the conference. The brief for the artwork will stress that it must address a current topic of debate in HCI. More broadly we will invite our community to register as CHI reviewers and stress their hybrid expertise in the Volunteer Center.Conclusion
This proposal requests support for the creation of a Digital Arts and Interaction Community as part of the CHI conference and ACM SIGCHI. The CHI community has shown that it has the interest and intellectual capability to cross-disciplinary borders, thus refuting the assumption made in the oft-quoted lecture by C.P. Snow, “The Two Cultures” [14]. A dedicated community to gather up these threads would serve to cultivate discourse, develop collaborations, and reach out to other communities to incorporate high quality contributions into the work of HCI.
Figure 6. Fragile by Carla Diana, from a paper given at alt.chi 2008.
Figure 7. Virtual VJ by Steve Gibson and Stefan Müller Arisona. The User in Flux workshop performance. CHI 2011.
Figure 8. humanaquarium at The User in Flux workshop performance. CHI 2011.
[1] Wilson, S. Information Arts. MIT Press. 2002.
[2] England, D. , Edmonds, E., Sheridan, J.G., Pobiner, S., Bryan-Kinns, N., Wright, P., Twidale, M., Diana, C. Digital arts and interaction (invited). In Extended Abstracts CHI 2011, ACM Press. 2011.
[3] Poupyrev, I., M. Lyons, S. Fels, and T. Blain. New interfaces for musical expression. Proceedings of CHI 2001, Extended Abstracts. 2001: ACM: pp. 491-492.
[4] Mason, Catherine. The Fortieth Anniversary of Event One at the Royal College of Art. EVA 2009 London Conference. 2009.
[5] Hewett T., Baecker, R.M., Card, S., Carey, J., Gasen, J.B., Mantei, M., Perlman, G., Strong, G.W. and Verplank, B. ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction. Available at http://old.sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html . Last updated 2009-07-29.
[6] Rokeby, D. Transforming Mirrors: Subjectivity and Control in Interactive Media. 1996. Available at http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/mirrors.html.
[7] Rokeby, D. Very Nervous System. Available at http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/vns.html.
[8] artsactive.net. Available at http://artsactive.net.
[9] England, D., Beale, R. (eds.), "HCI2008 Culture, Creativity, Interaction: People and Computers XXII, Volume 1", proceedings of the 22nd annual conference of Interaction, Sept 1-5, British Computer Society, 2008. http://www.hci2008.org
[10] Bryan-Kinns, N., Lloyd, T. Sheridan, J.G. (eds). (re)Actor3: the 3rd International Conference on Digital Live Art, Liverpool. 2008. http://www.digitalliveart.com/
[11] Leong, T.W., Tanaka, A., Wright, P, Gaye, L., & Taylor, R. The user in flux: bringing HCI and digital arts together to interrogate shifting roles in interactive media. In CHI Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Vancouver, Canada., 2011).
[12] Harrell, D.F. and Harrell, S.V. Strategies for Arts + Science + Technology Research: Executive Report on a Joint Meeting of the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. http://cms.mit.edu/news/Harrell-NSF-NEA-Workshop-ExecutiveReportFinalDraft.pdf.
[13] Cunningham, P., National and regional policies for design, creativity and user-driven innovation. Pro Inno Europe Thematic Report July 2008. 2008.
[14] Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures. Cambridge University Press. 1960.
- David England is the Head of Computing at Liverpool John Moores University. He has worked with artists in new media for the last 20 years. His intial collaboration was with Tunde Cockshott on Tunde's Wet+Sticky paint program which mimics the behaviour of real paint, For the last 10 years he has collaborated with FACT on a number of projects including Unmasking3 and the HCI Exhibition. Besides this he is also active in mainstream HCI tackling such areas as Whole Body Interaction (Workshops at CHI2009 and CHI2010) and Cloud Computing (EPSRC project and CHI2011 workshop). he was also Conference Chair and Papers Chair of HCI2008
- Jill Fantauzzacoffin is a Ph.D. Candidate and Presidential Fellow in Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology. Formerly a painter, Jill's work turned to interactive technological art upon becoming a student at Georgia Tech. Jill is conducting a study on the work practices of engineers, computer scientists, and artists working on similar projects for the NSF CreativeIT program under the auspices of her advisor Jay David Bolter. Her dissertation is titled Art, Technology & Invention. Jill is also working on haptics technologies which evolved from one of her digital art projects. These technologies are in the patenting process through Georgia Tech.
- Dr. Celine Latulipe has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada. She is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the Department of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Latulipe has long been fascinated by two-handed interaction in the real world, and the absence of it in the human-computer interface. She has developed numerous individual and collaborative two-handed interaction techniques and these have blossomed into a more general exploration of creative expression. Dr. Latulipe works on projects with choreographers, dancers, artists and theatre producers to better understand creative work in practice and how technology may play a role in supporting and evaluating creative work practices. Currently, Dr. Latulipe is working on many projects, including the NSF CreativeIT-funded Dance.Draw project. She teaches courses in Human-Computer Interaction as well as Rapid Prototyping and Interface Building.
Celine Latulipe, Erin Carroll, and Danielle Lottridge. Evaluating longitudinal projects combining technology with temporal arts. In ACM CHI 2011 Proceedings, pages 1835-1844, 2011.
Celine Latulipe, Erin Carroll, and Danielle Lottridge. Exploring the measurement and use of audience engagement data in the performing arts. In ACM CHI 2011 Proceedings, pages 1845-1854, 2011.
Erin Carroll, Celine Latulipe, Richard Fung and Michael Terry. Creativity Factor Evaluation: Towards a Standardized Survey Metric for Creativity Support. In ACM Creativity & Cognition 2009 Proceedings, pages 127-136, 2009.
Celine Latulipe and Annabel Manning. Layered surveillance. In ACM CHI 2010 Companion Proceed- ings, pages 3007-3012, 2010.
Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, Arthur Carroll, Erin Carroll, Berto Gonzalez, Vikash Singh, Mike Wirth and Danielle Lottridge. Exploring the design space in technology-augmented dance. In ACM CHI 2010 Companion Proceedings, pages 2995-3000, 2010.
Celine Latulipe and Annabel Manning. “Interactive Surveillance.” Interactive Digital Art Installation presented at (re)Actor3 Digital Live Art Conference, Liverpool, UK, September 2008.
- ERNEST EDMONDS is a pioneering digital artist, an international expert on human-computer interaction and, specifically, creativity and the Creative Industries. He first used computers in his art practice in 1968. He is Professor of Computation and Creative Media in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions, fast track, section of the MIT Press journal Leonardo and a Co-Editor of the journal. He co-founded the SIGCHI conference series, Creativity and Cognition. His art is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who are collecting his archives as part of the National Archive of Computer-Based Art and design
Jennifer G. Sheridan is the Director of BigDog Interactive, a small company of creative computer programmers and User Experience experts who develop bespoke code for interactive applications. Jennifer is Head of User Experience - designing and developing UX strategies and applications for global clients ranging from Nokia and the Technology Strategy Board to the Science Museum London. She is the Founder and Director of the (re)Actor International Conference Series on Digital Live Art and has exhibited her own work in Europe, Australia and North America. Her work has received a number of awards including IC Tomorrow Digital Innovation, awarded at the BAFTA, a Gold Medal for Excellence in design (USA), and Grace Hopper Women in Computing scholarships. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University - her thesis Digital Live Art: Mediating Wittingness in Playful Arenas defined the performative interaction found in merging Live Art, Computing and HCI practices particularly in unanticipated performance spaces. She obtained an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a BA in Rhetoric and Professional Writing with a Computer Graphics specialisation from the University of Waterloo.
- Dr. Scott Pobiner is an Assistant Professor of Information, Design and Management and the former Director of the Design and Management Program in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons the New School for Design where he teaches courses in design research, technology, and innovation. He studies the relationship between design and digitality, and the way the technology affects learning and learning environments. He received his doctorate (Doctor of Design) from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he studied the impact that digital displays have on interaction and pedagogy in design education, publishing his dissertation entitled Design Education: A System for Enhancing Interaction using Multiple Displays. Dr. Pobiner also holds a Master of Design Studies degree from Harvard University (GSD) and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University’s School of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Scott’s professional work has included architectural design and construction of schools and campus planning, software development for digital collaboration tools, product design, and interaction design, and the design of new technologies and environments to support collaborative work and learning. He has worked with companies in technology and design industries including Herman Miller Inc., Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard. Prior to coming to Parsons Scott was a visiting professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology and has lectured at the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities and Harvard University.
Scott G. Pobiner and Anijo Punnen Mathew. 2007. Who killed design?: addressing design through an interdisciplinary investigation. In CHI '07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1925-1928. DOI=10.1145/1240866.1240925 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240866.1240925
Scott G. Pobiner, Anijo Punnen Mathew, and Justin Taylor. 2008. What is a chi portfolio?. In CHI '08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2611-2612. DOI=10.1145/1358628.1358725 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1358628.1358725
Scott Pobiner. 2006. Collaborative multimedia learning environments. In CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1235-1240. DOI=10.1145/1125451.1125682 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1125451.1125682
- Dr. Nick Bryan-Kinns is a Senior Lecturer in Graphical User Interface Design and Interactional Sound and Music Lead at the Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary, University of London. His research focuses on exploring mutual engagement in creative collaborations and has been a panel member for the NSF CreativeIT programme, chair of the ACM Creativity and Cognition 2009 conference, co-editor of special issues of journals such as CoDesign.
- Stuart Reeves is a Research Fellow at Horizon Digital Economy Research, University of Nottingham. He is interested in the design of interactive technologies situated in public and semi-public settings, with particular focus on issues such as spectatorship. In his work he has been involved in developing, deploying and evaluating interaction in a variety of settings such as museums and galleries, crowded urban locations, and artistic or performance events taking place anywhere from city streets to dedicated venues. This work is explored in his book Designing Interfaces in Public Settings, published by Springer.
- Atau Tanaka bridges the fields of media art, experimental music, and research. He worked at IRCAM, was Artistic Ambassador for Apple France, and was researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, and was an Artistic Co-Director of STEIM in Amsterdam. Atau creates sensor-based musical instruments for performance, and is known for his work with biosignal interfaces. He seeks to harness collective musical creativity in mobile environments, seeking out the continued place of the artist in democratized digital forms. His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, SFMOMA, Eyebeam, V2, ICC, and ZKM and has been mentor at NESTA.