Curating Digital Public Art

Abstract

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.