This article is concerned with the design of interactive art systems intended for display in public locations. It reviews approaches to interactive art systems and discusses the issue of creative engagement with them by the active audience. An approach to elaborating a model of creative engagement is described and exploratory work on its refinement is reported.

This paper explores the idea of the exhibition as a living laboratory in the making and curating of interactive art. It suggests that museums can act as living laboratories where curators, artists and audiences collaborate in real-world settings. Such laboratories are shown to be essential for the study of the audience experience of interactive art, a key part of understanding interactivity as a medium. The paper describes Beta_space: an experimental public exhibition venue and research environment for interactive art. It places this initiative within a historical continuum of transversal cultural display and the use of the museum as laboratory. It identifies an emerging phenomenon of hybrid research, production and exhibition spaces, and argues that such initiatives work to overcome the continued distinctions, within traditional cultural institutions, between art, science and technology, object and experience, creation and consumption.

This chapter considers relationships between the interactive arts, audience engagement, and experience design in public art. What might each offer the other? Engagement and experience are central to current Human Computer Interaction (HCI) thinking. For artists, what the audience experiences or feels is a key consideration. This chapter presents research issues involved in defi ning and understanding audience/user engagement and experience. A series of broad questions are posed and discussed. Two examples of approaches being followed to fi nd answers to some of these questions are presented that demonstrate the kind of interesting results that are emerging including a more refi ned language for describing interactive experience. This research shows how frameworks, that support interactive art making and evaluation are being developed using practice-based research methodologies. These advances, made in the context of art, can be benefi cially applied to both the interactive Digital Arts and HCI.

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