Jennifer Seevinck

Exploration and reflection in interactive art: glass pond

Glass Pond is an interactive artwork designed to engender exploration and reflection through an intuitive, tangible interface and a simulation agent. It is being developed using iterative methods. A study has been conducted with the aim of illuminating user experience, interface, design, and performance issues.The paper describes the study methodology and process of data analysis including coding schemes for cognitive states and movements. Analysis reveals that exploration and reflection occurred as well as composing behaviours (unexpected). Results also show that participants interacted to varying degrees. Design discussion includes the artworks (novel) interface and configuration.

A Virtual Operating Room for Context-Relevant Training

A fully immersive virtual environment simulating an operating room is described. The Virtual Operating Room (VOR) is a platform that integrates procedural medical simulators into a coherent, context-relevant training environment. Trainees interact with a surgical team comprised of real and/or virtual team members (e.g., attending surgeon, anesthesiologist, scrub technician, and circulating nurse). All characters are defined by their procedural knowledge and personality. The interface capitalizes on natural interactions and is largely driven by voice recognition and text-to-speech software. A custom designed controller manages the VOR functionality, rendering platform, speech recognition, and text-to-speech generation modules. The VOR allows instructors and researchers to simulate the physical and social context in which surgical procedures are performed. The VOR can be used to train surgical teams and address issues in judgment, decision making, team dynamics, and interpersonal skills. Most importantly, the VOR allows medical teams to train the way they operate without putting patients at risk.

Emergence in Interactive Art

This book is concerned with emergence, interaction, art and computing. It introduces a new focus for emergence in interactive art: the emergent experience. Emergence literature is discussed and an organising framework, the Taxonomy of Emergence in Interactive Art (TEIA) is provided together with case studies of digital, interactive art systems that facilitate emergence. Evidence from evaluations of people interacting with the works is analysed using the TEIA. Artworks from across the world are also reviewed to further illustrate the potential for emergence. Interactive art is, itself, still a young domain where audience influence, or interaction with the work is a defining aspect. Emergence in Interactive Art explores the rich opportunities for interactive experiences of digital art systems that are provided by looking through a lens of emergence. And what better way to explore these potentials than through the open-ended domain of emergence, with its inherent affinity to the natural world? Through an integrated approach of practice, research and theory this book reveals design and analytical insights relating to emergence, interaction and interactive art to benefit artists, researchers and designers alike.

Dichroic Wade

The interactive artwork Dichroic Wade explores the hybrid and concrete form of data, light and space through a colorful display of dynamic reflected and transmitted light. This light is manipulated and treated in a painterly way, where the physical manipulation of light, shadow and colour facilitates audience engagement with the hybrid data and real space. The light changes in response to both people moving through the space and data streams describing the changing wind conditions in the San Francisco Bay. The bright colour reflections on the gallery walls, ceiling and floor facilitate audience engagement with this data. It is through this interpretation of behaviours in the data that the audience is able to make new meanings, working to relate themselves to both data and their surroundings in meaningful ways.

Concepts, water and reflections on practice

This paper discusses the nature of the conceptual structure in art practice, by example. It draws on insights gained from a practice based research (PBR) approach to making art. The PBR methods used include Reflective Practice and are briefly described. They have informed an understanding of the conceptual structure as an instance of problem framing. This is demonstrated by two creative examples, taken from two interactive artworks. These were informed by an evolving conceptual structure concerned with water.

Emergence and Artistic Visualization

This research draws on theories of emergence to inform the creation of an artistic and direct visualization. This is an interactive artwork and drawing tool for creative participant experiences. As is discussed, emergence is characteristically creative. It is also debated across and within disciplines, resulting in a range of understandings as well as models. This paper shows how one fields understanding of emergence (complexity theory) can be used to facilitate emergence in another domain (design research) and, importantly provide the opportunity for someone to act creatively. This paper begins with a brief review of some theories of emergence to show how they interrelate and can effect the perception of emergent structures in an observer, and, correspondingly, the design for creative experience. This is subsequently demonstrated in the second section of the paper where an interactive artwork and drawing application, Of me with me, is presented. This artwork by the author was created during collaboration with community artists from Cerebral Palsy League. The discussion covers the application of emergence theories to create this visualization in order facilitate the perception of structures and creative behaviours in a participant and to facilitate self-efficacy in the community artist user group.

How the Work, Works

This chapter presents evaluations of three case study interactive art works, described in the previous chapter. The evaluations are focused on participant experiences of emergence: that is, perceptual emergence . Perceptual emergence was defined in Chap. 2 and classified in the TEIA , but when it comes to people interacting with an artwork, how would we recognise it if it occurred? And what would an emergent experience would be like? The studies discussed here demonstrate how evaluation and qualitative research methods, including the TEIA and specially created emergence coding tools, can be used to detect emergent participant experiences. A number of data samples are also presented, providing insight into participant experiences of emergence. Characteristics include open-endedness , with ‘infinite variation, like looking at the stars’, depth, like a ‘story within a story’ and creativity , as in the drawing experiences with Of me With me (Seevinck, 2014). The evaluation findings illustrate three of the four types of perceptual emergence from the TEIA: referenced extrinsic, referenced intrinsic and concrete intrinsic perceptual emergence. Other, non-emergent behaviours were also found, such as the generic ways in which people engage with interactive art. Identifying emergent and non-emergent behaviours alike can scope out some dimensions for participant experience of interactive art, pointing us towards new ways of understanding this area.

Three Interactive Art Systems

This chapter describes three interactive art systems that were later found to facilitate emergent experiences. The discussion details my practice within a practice-based research approach. The three works are +−now (2008), Of me With me (2014) and Dichroic Wade (2016). Their form, technology and modes of interaction are very different, as are their creative, conceptual agendas. All are, however, primarily concerned with participant experience and emergence. As such, a key concern has been exploring the potential for perceptual emergence during participant interaction. Different approaches for facilitating perceptual emergence have been explored, including the use of models of physical emergence in the art system to effect perceptual emergence, an approach that draws upon both sides of the TEIA tree (physical and perceptual), simultaneously.

Interaction in Art and Computing

The questions surrounding emergence in interactive art necessitate insight from different domains. While the previous chapter established an understanding of emergence, here the focus is on interaction . A selection of contemporary arts practices and computing approaches are reviewed as these can point to new ways of thinking about the relationships between audience, art system and artist. Participation , experience and open interactions form the core of the chapter’s discussions, leading to insight into open and emergent digital interactions.

Emergence in Depth

The preceding chapters have provided a foundation for emergence in interactive art. In this chapter the interested reader will find an expansion of the theoretical discussions presented in Chap. 2, facilitating insight into some of the debates and concerns surrounding emergence. As well as theoretical, however, the focus of this discussion is also illustrative and pragmatic, its aim being to find a useful understanding of emergence in the context of interactive art. I will begin with the challenge of explaining emergence. This involves reviewing reductionist through to deterministic and complex systems approaches. Digital art and computational models for emergence are also presented. The processes of perception that inform how we see are then reviewed. These can help us understand how designers perceive emergent shapes, as well as creative, visual thinking more generally. There is still much to understand when it comes to creative,perceptual emergence perceptual emergence and the physical emergence of our complex, natural world, but the application of deep understandings of emergence to interactive art experiences will move enquiry forward.