There are a number of potential synergies between digital technologies and the arts. One that has been extensively studied in the context of cultural informatics is the application of digitization technologies in order to preserve, archive, and communicate information about artworks. To this end, the systematic evaluation of digitization projects has resulted in widely accepted technical standards and procedures to be followed by curators and information professionals.
Comparatively less settled are the processes involved in the development and experience of digital art.
One of the main characteristics of digital technology that has been widely explored by digital artists is interactivity, the creative dialog that occurs between human participants and computer programs, in which participants’ input determines the systems’ outcomes.
Although art was interactive long before the use of computers, today’s ubiquitous, networked, and increasingly intelligent computing technologies have made this interactivity much more explicit, transforming the nature of audience experience.
In this context, issues relating to human-computer interaction (HCI), especially in the context of experience design, play an important role in the creation and experience of interactive art in the digital age.
In particular, this book puts forward evaluation in practice as a key to understanding interactive experience in line with the paradigm of practice-based research (PBR). Informed by methods drawn from HCI, it explores the meaning of evaluation in the context of interactive digital art, the kind of measurements that are relevant, and the formative role of the evaluation in understanding audience engagement.
Through a series of selected case studies, the book investigates a broad range of artistic forms, enabling technologies, and evaluation methods, putting forward an interdisciplinary research agenda relating HCI and digital art.
As such, this book is a timely publication that can be highly beneficial to practitioners and researchers engaged in the creative arts.
