Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner (Art Design Management Policy a) [Paperback]

We live in an age when interaction is an everyday phenomenon. Interaction implies a two way process in which we expect to give, as well as to receive and this expectation is fundamental to the kinds of interactive experiences we encounter throughout our lives. The computer has opened the door to opportunities for expanding human interaction with artworks. It is an open door because, for some time now, the public have had expectations of interactivity in galleries and museums and, indeed, in the street which sometimes borders on a sense of entitlement. "Do not touch!" always used to be the nearest sign to an artwork, but today we are often invited to touch, tread on, write on or make contact with the artwork in any number of other ways. When, in October 2010, the Tate Modern in London was forced to close access to Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds because the fervour of the crowd's interaction with the works had produced dust that might damage health, many people reacted fiercely. Denied the opportunity to run, roll about and jump through this installation of millions of tiny porcelain sunflower seeds on the floor of the Turbine Hall, a `faintly mutinous air' was detected. The right to interact was being thwarted.

This book is about interaction in art and the research being done by creative practitioners to make novel and exciting ways of experiencing art a reality. Their ideas and experiences are exemplified here through the artworks they create, curate and evaluate. The practitioners who have contributed chapters are artists, musicians, designers, software developers and curators at the same time as being teachers, lecturers and organizers, working in museums, university art and design faculties, and in the humanities and information technology. The rich diversity of material and theoretical outcomes that has arisen from this practice-based research provides fascinating insights into the growing phenomena of artworks shaped by the audiences who interact with them, the implications of which we are only just beginning to grasp. The distinctive stance of the book is that it is practitioner led and multi-disciplinary in character. Practitioner researchers are developing values and approaches to the creation of knowledge that represent a new kind of discourse. They represent an emerging breed of creative people whose practice is at the centre of the research and whose research is transforming their practice. The realization of the studio-based environment extended to the `living laboratory' has provided opportunities for practitioners to carry out research that enhances creative practice at the same time as developing methodologies for generating and communicating new kinds of knowledge. If our understanding of the nature of practitioner derived knowledge is to be extended in a way that begins to have a beneficial impact on both research and practice, then part of the challenge of disseminating new thinking and knowledge from practice must fall to the practitioners themselves. The practitioner researchers who provide the impetus for this book are meeting this challenge.

This book is about interacting in its many forms, including interaction between artworks and audiences, between creative practitioners from different disciplines and between those practitioners and the norms of research in contemporary society. Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner uses the experience of leading creative practitioners to provide a unique perspective on these interacting elements.

Interacting gives a primary voice to practitioner researchers in the emerging academic discourse about creative practice and research, a voice which has been somewhat muted in debates about the nature of practitioner knowledge and the role of the artefact in knowledge creation. By creating and evaluating interactive artworks, the contributors challenge existing notions about the role of research in practice, and their accounts provide fascinating insights into the growing phenomenon of artworks shaped by the audiences who interact with them.

As workers within the field of human-computer interaction, the Editors' interest in creativity in art, design and technology has led them to develop methodologies for research capable of producing evidence simultaneously with the creation of new artefacts. They and the other contributors, all of whom have been associated with the Creativity and Cognition Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney, demonstrate both that there is much to recommend in the bringing of research into creative practice and also that research itself can be transformed by way of creative practice.

Linda Candy (editor) is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her research interests are in creativity in the arts and sciences and practice-based research. She has a Bachelor of Arts, an MPhil in Computing research and a PhD in Computer Science. She has many years experience in research and development in IT, design and art and has written over one hundred papers about the creative process, the role of computers and the methodologies for investigating these areas of research. She wrote and co-edited with Ernest Edmonds, `Explorations in Art and Technology', published by Springer-Verlag. She is a joint founder of the ACM Creativity and Cognition conference series and an associate editor of Behaviour and IT.

Ernest Edmonds (editor) first used computers in his art practice in 1968 and first showed a collaborative interactive work in 1970. He has exhibited throughout the world, from Moscow to LA. He has been an invited speaker in, for example, the UK, France, the USA, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia. He has over 200 publications in art, creativity and human-computer interaction. Since the 1970s he has pioneered the development of practice-based PhDs in art, systems and digital technology. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Leonardo's Transactions and Professor of Computation and Creative Media at the University of Technology, Sydney.