Understanding performative interactions in public settings

Abstract

Interactive digital technologies pervade our shared spaces in personal, mobile, infrastructural and other embedded forms. These changes challenge the ways we understand and investigate the relationships between people, computing and settings. Responding to this situation-where ubiquitous computing is not only personal but also public, and where digital interactions may happen anywhere-this special issue explores how HCI research can use the strengths of an intersection of theory, practice and innovation in order to best address this conjunction of interactive technologies, public spaces and people interacting with or within both.With this shift to interaction happening in public spaces, people can no longer be seen as just 'users' but have to be understood as acting assemblages of bodies and technologies in the space they inhabit. This shift highlights the need to understand users in every setting-including those at desks and at work-as socially and culturally situated humans with agency. While this is not a new research development, this special issue speculates on and discusses how the shift to 'everywhere interactions' makes it important for research in human-computer interaction to reach beyond existing conventions. With this work comes a need to understand the interacting human as a situated body that is at any moment also a possible spectacle: as a body, a human and a user who engages with technology in response to the situation while also being a 'performance' for others to witness. Understanding people as actors in their context allows us to regard every user as a 'performing body' and a 'performing subject', and it enables us to analyse the performative aspects of interaction in many other situations than those where we design for actually staged performances in a defined performance space or stage. In this sense, 'performative interaction' is both concerned with technologies for on-stage performers using technologies as part of artistic expression, and an analytical frame for understanding every situation in which people engage with technologies (in public space). The question becomes: where and in which situations is this analytical frame relevant and useful?Recognising a growing interest in the HCI community to work with ubiquitous computing as a personal but also public technology, the editors set out to explore a number of topics within performative interaction that would develop and possibly consolidate contemporary work into a nuanced perspective on human-computer interaction in public space. Partly based on previous work with these questions, we selected contributions that expand our understanding of performative interfaces in a variety of settings as well as demonstrate ways of participating in performative interaction, of developing techniques for hiding and showcasing different elements of performance and of evaluating the experience of performing in public.

Exploring Mobile Devices as Personal Public Displays

“…This method builds on the dramaturgical perspective of Goffman [8] which posits that people act in ways to guide and control other people's impression of them. We sought to understand how this performative interaction [27] mediates the use of public displays across differing locations, audiences, and the user's own perception of this situation.…”

StarLight

“…This behavior is independent of whether they are interacting or not. This behavior has a significant impact on the way people use interactive systems [6,25] -like interactive media architecture -in a public setting and it therefore needs to be taken into account when designing such systems [11,21,30,36]. In [15] Gehl categorizes activity in public environments into necessary, optional and social activities which are accompanied by slightly different behaviors.…”

The Role of Embarrassment to Shape Public Interactions

“…Williamson et al [21] define performative interactions as "any interaction or technology that is influenced by or affected by the spectacle resulting from its use, the public setting where it is used, or the presence of spectators as an audience" [21, p. 1546]. Based on this definition, they identify two types of performative interactions: those where technology is part of the artistic expression and rely on a performer actually performing on some kind of stage (we call them performer-driven interactions), and those with no official performer where it is the technology that triggers an audience to participate (we call them technology-driven interactions).…”

“…This unfolding is mainly visible in the transformation of the spectator moving from back to front stage [8][9], that is from being at the side of the interaction to being in the centre of it, and also from being part of an unfocused interaction, as a passer-by or a distracted observer, to a focused interaction, one the spectator is aware of and wittingly participating in. The performative interaction assumes the presence of a performer and a device (i.e., the technology in the definition by [21]) without specifying however the particular role this technology may take, or the function it may display. In this way, both forms of performative interactions mentioned above are accounted for.…”