13 Diversities of Engagement
Ernest Edmonds
13.1 Introduction
The use of computer systems is seeing a growth of dynamic and interactive ambient art in which the artwork is an integral part of an ordinary environment, such as a meeting space, bar, or square. Computer-based interactive art has encouraged a concern for a better understanding of audience engagement.
At the simplest level, this is a measure of how long someone looks at an artwork. In the museum world such simple measures are used to judge how attractive an exhibit is or, perhaps more accurately, how attracted to an exhibit members of the public are. The concept of engagement can be elaborated. For example, at least three kinds of engagement can be identified: attraction (the work drawing attention to itself), sustainability (the length of time that someone finds it engaging), and repeatability (the extent to which someone wants to experience the work again and again).
We can relate the first two categories to Alessandro Bollo and Luca Dal Pozzolo’s terms (2005). In a busy public place, be it gallery or bar, it is particularly important to overcome other distractions and ensure that the work has enough attraction power. If attention is sustained, the work has sufficient holding power to create a hot spot, as Bollo and Dal Pozzolo would put it. Another form of engagement is one that extends over long periods, in which the visitor returns for repeated experiences, as in seeing a favorite play many times. These are factors that enable the hot spot to remain hot on repeated visits to the exhibition. Facilitating this meets with the highest approval in the museum and gallery world.
Thus, artists who make digital works that take engagement into account become involved, in quite explicit ways, in strategies for drawing the audience in and retaining their interest. This process can be one that includes an element of audience education, in the sense that the artwork can be designed so as to attract the public and interact with them in ways that develop interest and engagement. The predictability of such designs is not always strong and normally requires evaluation in context. Thus, evaluation methods have become incorporated into some artists’ practice as a result. Examples of this can be seen in the curated program of interactive art exhibits and their evaluation in the public exhibition area Beta_Space, discussed later in this chapter.
The artworks that are made for the new audiences that these artists aim for can be ambient, or existing in the environment without any specific signals indicating that they should be seen as art. Of course, the context itself can be a strong indicator in this sense. So we might distinguish between such art in a gallery and art in the street, for example. Engagement and ambient art are concepts that are important in the digital art world, but they have good continuity with the nondigital world.
An increasingly common concern is in coming to an understanding of the experience itself in the context of facilitating audience experience, whether by provoking it or gaining knowledge about it. Experience can take many forms, from pleasure to fear, from captivation to creation of danger, of difficulty, of joy. Any of them can be part of an art system. When creating interactive art, the artist will often be considering issues of audience experience in terms of one or more of these forms. Whether or not artists talk about aesthetics explicitly, they make aesthetic decisions, and in the case of interactive art, some of those decisions relate to the quality of the interactive experience. There are aesthetic qualities in interaction just as there are such qualities in color, shape, movement, or sound. Examples of the properties that, for example, Boden (2010) identifies as pertaining to aesthetics of interaction are predictability and control, attributability (to what extent is the audience able to detect that they are causing change, for example), and the speed of feedback (response time, in computer terms).
The quality of the interactive experience is an issue for the aesthetics of interaction, and the decisions made by artists are often framed by the kind of experience that the work is concerned with. That influences the aesthetic decisions made during the construction of such a work.
13.2 Interaction Engagement and Experience
The physical way that the audience interacts with a work is a major part of any interactive art system. Three main approaches are used. In the first, members of the audience physically manipulate the work. In the second, members of the audience are provided with special devices of some kind, such as the headsets in Char Davies’s works using virtual reality (McRobert 2007) or George Khut’s Cardiomorphologies (Khut and Muller 2005). The third approach is ambient, in which audience movements, or states are detected by noninvasive devices such as cameras, floor pads, or infrared beams.
These approaches are
- direct
- facilitated
- ambient
In making such works, questions need to be asked about participant or audience engagement. Do people become engaged with the artwork? Is that engagement sustained? What are the factors that influence the nature of the engagement? Does engagement relate to pleasure, frustration, challenge, or anger, for example? Of course, artists can use themselves to represent the audience and rely on their own reactions to guide their work. Much art is made like that, although asking the opinion of expert peers, at least, is also normal. However, understanding audience engagement with interactive works is quite a challenge and needs more extensive investigation than merely introspection.
Many forms of engagement may or may not be desired in relation to an artwork—for example, attractors, or attributes of an artwork that encourage the public to pay attention and so become engaged. The immediate question arises of how long such engagement might last, and we find that the attributes that encourage sustained engagement are not the same as those that attract in the first place. Another form of engagement is one that extends over long periods, in which one goes back for repeated experiences such as seeing a favorite play or movie many times throughout one’s life. We often find that this long-term form of engagement is not associated with a strong initial attraction. Engagement can grow with experience. These issues are ones that the interactive artist needs to be clear about, and the choices have significant influence on the nature of the interaction employed.
13.3 Engagement and Experience
What are the relationships between interactive art, audience engagement, and experience design, and what might each offer the other? We can break this primary question down into engagement, evaluation, and familiarity.
13.3.1 Engagement
What factors influence engagement with interaction? Which modalities are most significant? If we combine sound and image, for example, is engagement increased? Can we predict engagement? What kind of engagement is interesting and valuable? Is engagement with art relevant to engagement with, for example, an information system?
The central point is to see if we can discover how to predict engagement with interaction in these various respects. First, however, we need to know if there is any engagement in any particular situation. Certain clues can be obtained by simple observation. If after a quick look someone walks away and goes to do something else, we might assume that they were not very engaged. On the other hand, if they keep coming back to a work and actively interact with it over time, we might assume that they were engaged. These simple measures are helpful. But to understand the factors better, we need to use methods that elicit the information from participants by either having them verbalize their experiences or by asking them in interviews.
When an interactive work is engaging, why is it so? It is probably not simply because it sounds or looks nice. It is likely to be based on the experience of the interactive relationship itself. So what are the characteristics of interactive relationships that engage us?
In evaluating interactive art and trying to find if it is engaging, we clearly need to make comparisons and try to isolate the influential factors. Laboratory-style controlled experiments are hard or impossible to conduct in this area, because of the complexity of the problem. There are many variables, and we do not have direct access to the human experiences that are a central concern. We need to find some way of drawing comparisons between different design features and participant experiences, some way of drawing comparisons between how different design features lead to different participant experiences. So we need to conduct research that does so and, even if it cannot be as reliable as we might wish, find ways of forming confident opinions. For example, we might use collective expert opinion as a source that can lead us to results that we trust.
13.3.2 Evaluation
How do we get at the experience of our users and audiences? Can we ask them to articulate their feelings during the experience? Must we rely on recall? Are there any objective measures?
Following on from our first question, there is a need to identify and develop methods for conducting evaluation. In the world of human-computer interaction (HCI), closely related questions are seen to be important, and both practitioners and researchers are trying to find answers, such as in a CHI conference workshop (Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Roto, and Hassenzahl 2008) and in publications (e.g., Candy 2014).
13.3.3 Familiarity
If we are familiar with something, is our engagement likely to be lower? If the experience is subtle, might our engagement actually increase with familiarity?
The crucial point is that both the levels and the quality of engagement will change as time goes on. For almost every question that we ask, we can expect to find that the answer evolves, or even changes dramatically, over time. Changes may occur while a participant is interacting, between sessions, or over months or years of familiarity. Initial delight and excitement in a simple, well-designed interaction piece may well turn to boredom after ten or thirty or a hundred repeat visits.
As participants engage repeatedly with a given work over time they might come to yearn for it to do something different. Of course, some artworks do change their behavior over time, but then a change in behavior implies at least the possibility of a change in the level of engagement. Zafer Bilda’s work (briefly discussed later in this chapter) makes a contribution to the answer to this question, in the sense of showing how, in any particular case, we might tackle it (Bilda, Edmonds, and Candy 2008; Bilda 2011).
13.3.4 Art in the Object and in the Experience
Is interactive art about artworks? Perhaps it is concerned only with audience experience and not with objects at all? Might HCI design be less related to graphic or industrial design than we thought, less concerned with the object and more with the experience?
In one respect this is a philosophical rather than an empirical question. It asks where the essence of an interactive artwork is to be found. We might compare it to a question about a poem. Is the poem embodied in this particular text on this particular piece of paper? We might argue that the poem is some abstract thing that finds embodiment on the page. That is not good enough in the case of the interactive artwork, however. Somehow the participant’s behavior and experience is central to the essence of the work. So this is a hard question. Rather than try to answer it, we might simply note that we need to consider what we can discover about participant experience with at least as much vigor as we consider aspects of the object—interactive artwork, information system, or whatever it might be.
13.3.5 Lessons from HCI
What can interactive art learn from research in human-computer interaction? Can interactive artists make better art through engaging with HCI? On the other hand, does HCI make their art boring, less intuitive and authentic? Which artists benefit: professional gallery artists or artist-researchers creating prototypes?
A key current HCI issue is the problem of supporting people to be more creative. The implied research required is about understanding creative processes. This includes the contexts in which they flourish and the constraints that help or hinder successful results. Hidden behind this research is a requirement to evaluate creative processes and, hence, a need to determine the success or failure of their outcomes.
Taken as a whole, we can see that this is a particularly difficult research challenge. So how can art help? Well, it is common in science to look at what are known as boundary conditions or boundary cases. We can often learn more by studying the more extreme conditions than we can by studying just the normal everyday ones. For example, vision research, or how we see and understand the world around us, is quite a difficult topic. One way it has been advanced is by looking at when the process goes wrong by, for example, studying visual illusions, in which we can find clues about how the process works, or by looking at how failures actually stimulate creativity (Fischer 1994).
13.4 Understanding Experience in Interactive Art
With the preceding section in mind, some specific contributions are now reviewed, each of which adds to our ability to deal with the issues discussed.
13.4.1 The Beta_Space Model
Beta_Space is a joint venture between the Powerhouse Museum and Creativity and Cognition Studios at the University of Technology, both in Sydney, Australia, that began in 2004. It was (it is currently suspended) an exhibition space that showed new interactive art in a public area of the museum and was curated by Creativity and Cognition Studios. The specific model used was that artworks technically complete but not yet shown to the public could be exhibited, and audience reactions to the work could be gathered in formal ways. This evaluation process helped artists refine their works and helped researchers understand audience engagement better (Candy and Edmonds 2011).
The starting point for the Beta_Space developments might be placed in 1996, when a particular set of artist-in-residence studies were undertaken (Edmonds 1996). In these studies, four established artists worked with technologists to explore the application of digital technologies to their work, and particular attention was placed on the processes involved. In short, this exploration led to funded research projects in which Linda Candy and I investigated collaborations between artists and digital technologists.
These took place in the UK between 1998 and 2003 and involved some twenty projects in two phases (Candy and Edmonds 2002). The artist-in-residence projects conducted from 1998 on were also influenced by the UK Department of Trade and Industry’s Technology Foresight Program, in which I was a member of the Creative Media subgroup. In particular, I was chair of the Access and Creativity Task Group from 1997 to 1999, which was partly influenced by the Mission to Japan, in which experimental situations were observed (Edmonds et al. 1998). In its conclusions, the task group recommended that collaborative art and technology research initiatives should be strongly encouraged (Edmonds 1999). As a result, I set up a research grouping, which formed the context for the artist-in-residence series of projects.
13.4.2 Costello’s Pleasure Framework
In the context of making interactive art, Brigid Costello has argued that the nature of play can best be understood using a taxonomy that she has termed a “pleasure framework” (Costello 2007, 2011; Costello and Edmonds 2010). In Just a Bit of Spin (figure 13.1), for example, participants enter into a gamelike situation and play with excerpts from Australian political speeches.
Brigid Costello. Just a Bit of Spin. 2007, two views of someone interacting with the work. See color insert. (Reproduced by permission of the artist.)
In doing this work Costello has synthesized a collection of research results that relate pleasure to thirteen categories, each of which has quite different characteristics. In the following, Costello describes each of her categories, giving each one a name:
Creation is the pleasure participants get from having the power to create something while interacting with a work. It is also the pleasure participants get from being able to express themselves creatively.
Exploration is the pleasure participants get from exploring a situation. Exploration is often linked with the next pleasure, discovery, but not always. Sometimes it is fun to just explore.
Discovery is the pleasure participants get from making a discovery or working something out.
Difficulty is the pleasure participants get from having to develop a skill or to exercise skill in order to do something. Difficulty might also occur at an intellectual level in works that require a certain amount of skill to understand them or an aspect of their content.
Competition is the pleasure participants get from trying to achieve a defined goal. This could be a goal that is defined by them or it might be one that is defined by the work. Completing the goal could involve working with or against another human participant, a perceived entity within the work, or the system of the work itself.
Danger is the pleasure of participants feeling scared, in danger, or as if they are taking a risk. This feeling might be as mild as a sense of unease or might involve a strong feeling of fear.
Captivation is the pleasure of participants feeling mesmerized or spellbound by something or of feeling like another entity has control over them.
Sensation is the pleasure participants get from the feeling of any physical action the work evokes, e.g. touch, body movements, hearing, vocalizing etc.
Sympathy is the pleasure of sharing emotional or physical feelings with something.
Simulation is the pleasure of perceiving a copy or representation of something from real life.
Fantasy is the pleasure of perceiving a fantastical creation of the imagination.
Camaraderie is the pleasure of developing a sense of friendship, fellowship or intimacy with someone.
Subversion is the pleasure of breaking rules or of seeing others break them. It is also the pleasure of subverting or twisting the meaning of something or of seeing someone else do so. (Costello 2007)
Even a very brief look at the categories that Costello has identified shows that playful interaction comes in many forms, and so the characteristics of a playful artworks may be quite different from one another when they evoke or encourage different kinds of playful engagement. Whether we look at this from the point of view of an artist making a playful work or of an interaction designer incorporating play into an interactive system, we can see that questions need to be addressed in more detail than indicated in the previous section. From Costello’s work we also begin to see some of the answers.
It turns out that the time spent with a system and its familiarity change the nature of the experience, whether we are concerned with playfulness or not. This is the focus of the second framework to be discussed.
13.4.3 Bilda’s Engagement Framework
Zafer Bilda has developed a model of the engagement process through studies of audience interactions with a range of artworks (Bilda, Edmonds, and Candy 2008; Bilda 2011). He found that the engagement mode shifts from unintended actions through to deliberate ones that can lead further to a sense of control. In some works, it continues into modes that engage more exploration and uncertainty. He has identified four interaction phases: adaptation, learning, anticipation, and deeper understanding (figure 13.2).
Zafer Bilda’s creative engagement model. See color insert. (Reproduced by permission of Zafer Bilda.)
- Adaptation: Participants adapt to the changes in the environment, learning how to behave and how to set expectations. They work with and through uncertainty. This phase often develops from unintended-action mode through to deliberate-action mode.
- Learning: Participants begin to develop an internal or mental model of what the system does. This also means that they develop (and change) expectations, emotions, and behaviors, as well as accessing internal memories and beliefs. In this phase, the participant interprets exchanges with the system and explores and experiments with relationships between initiation and feedback from the system. They develop expectations about how to initiate certain feedback and accumulate interpretations of the exchanges. This phase can occur from deliberate-action mode to intended or in-control mode.
- Anticipation: In this phase, participants know what the system will do in relation to initiation. In other words, they can predict the interaction. Their intention is more grounded compared with the previously described phases. This phase can occur from deliberate action mode to intended or in-control mode.
- Deeper understanding: Participants reach a more complete understanding of the artwork and what their relationship is to the artwork. In this phase participants judge and evaluate at a higher, conceptual level. Thus, they may discover a new aspect of an artwork or an exchange not noticed before. This phase can occur from intended or in-control mode to intended or uncertain mode.
Costello’s forms of engagement and Bilda’s stages of engagement may or may not be relevant to a particular artwork, but they provide examples of the choices that the interactive artist might make. However, whatever the nature of the experience, and presuming that the attractors have gained attention, it typically becomes desirable to begin engaging the audience in a way that can sustain interest for a significant time. This aspect of engagement might be found in the learning phase of Bilda’s model.
Facilitating the kind of engagement that leads to interest in repeated experiences of the work might be found in the deeper understanding phase of Bilda’s model. We often find that this long-term form of engagement is not associated with a strong initial attraction. Engagement can evolve with experience. These issues, once recognized, are important to the interactive artist, and such conscious choices have significant influence on the nature of the interaction employed.
From the artist’s point of view, interactivity has added both a new dimension and a new set of issues to art making. It has become difficult to understand an interactive artwork, even one that we have created ourselves, without reference to the participant’s responses. So we can expect a growth in the informed attention to the human participant’s perception and cognition of the art system and its context. This in no way implies that artworks will increasingly be made to please or to match consumer demand. On the contrary, it implies that the artist will be more able to challenge perception and cognition, to disturb, alarm, or confuse participants should they want to, as well as to relax, indulge, or mesmerize them if that is their choice. The application of evaluation methods in interactive art is likely to lead to a stronger emphasis on perception and cognition in interactive situations.
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