Blending Art Events and HCI Research

Abstract

International audienceWe present experiences as artists and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers exhibiting an interactive artwork called Tweetris at a public event, and its simultaneous research evaluation. We describe the unique opportunities a public art event offered for achieving our research goals, then discuss three key challenges we encountered: tensions between creative and research goals before the event, ethical considerations during the event and in analysis, and obstacles complicating subsequent evaluation as the work has evolved. We offer observations throughout that are important to consider when conducting HCI research at public art events

Charting Ethical Tensions in Multispecies Technology Research through Beneficiary-Epistemology Space

“…This has also challenged HCI's ethical processes. For example, Reilly et al [46] reflect on the process of negotiating ethical approval for the public art installation Tweetris, including: not having a priori research questions that could be answered through controlled experimentation; difficulty modifying approved protocols as the artwork evolved; and obtaining informed consent for walk-up participation.…”

Understanding Public Evaluation

“…Methodological challenges around recruitment, motivation, and intervention are harder to address. Reilly et al [24] discuss the ethics of using public events to access participants who may otherwise be uninterested in participating in research evaluations. Waern [32] discusses the importance of recognizing that public evaluations are interventions that inevitably alter public spaces that people are actively using, perhaps for the worse.…”

Deep Cover HCI

“…Evaluation settings such as public art events blur the boundary between public engagement and research. In the evaluation of Tweetris, researchers grappled with guidelines that allow for observation without an ethics review when the intervention is not invasion or interactive [26]. To deal with this, researchers sought approval for observations without consent but gathered traditional consent for collecting questionnaire data from participants.…”

“…For many "in the wild" evaluations, gathering informed consent from every possible participant is impractical and disruptive. For example, when researchers stage evaluations as part of public events (such as [26] [28]), signing consent forms and collecting qualitative data through questionnaires would be heavily disruptive to the experience as well as the natural behaviour of the participants, possibly skewing any data collected. Evaluations concerned with the usability of prompts without guidance [29], the attractiveness of displays [20], and "walk up" experience and appropriation [25] would be difficult to study meaningfully in a lab.…”