From transmission to multiplicity: interactive art installations as a site for research

Keir Smith. 2004. From transmission to multiplicity: interactive art installations as a site for research. In Proceedings of the 12th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia (MULTIMEDIA '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 977-978. DOI=10.1145/1027527.1027757 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1027527.1027757 Central Hypothesis: The methods with which many contemporary interactive art installations are being designed, built and experienced is a model of multiplicity. Further, that the study of the multitudinous nature of this experience can inform our understanding of how people interact, in a computer interface mediated group situation, with both each other and the interface. The outcomes of which can, in turn, help improve how we design and build interfaces for collaborative interaction. This research, through a literature review, interviews with practitioners in the field and analysis of techniques and technologies the field employs, intends to show that this model of multiplicity, which I will call MMM (Multiple Modalities [for the Multitudes1]), is a common interactive installation art methodology. In which the single author is replaced by a group of collaborators, the single object is replaced by a multitude of objects and that, most importantly in this research, the single reader can be replaced by multitudinous collaborative viusers. The technology to build computer mediated collaborative interfaces is in its infancy. The human-computer interaction (HCI) community has vast experience with the single-user, single-interface situation, but precious little with multi-user interfaces, when those users are in same local space, using the same interface. It is the intention of the in situ study component of this thesis can be used, in conjunction with an appropriate literature review, to remedy this deficiency in our understanding. This research, employing a case study methodology, will investigate two works. Conversations a multimedia project currently being developed at the iCinema Centre and the configurable, experimental, interactive, multi-user same-site, installation Socialising with Strangers will be Then to help inform our understanding of group collaborative interaction. The technical infrastructure of SwS will include logging and recording software. A review of relevant research, as well as analysis of the data collected from SwS, in situ, will be combined to aid the generation of a set of guidelines for computer-mediated interactive systems for multiple locally situated viusers.