Abstract:
I have been working with artists and performers for over fifteen years to create, tour and study interactive artworks as a way of inspiring new techniques in human-computer interaction. My talk will draw on examples of this work, ranging from games that mix online participants with those on-the-streets, to the design of amusement rides that deliver thrilling experiences, to a musical instrument that captures and retells its life story. I will draw on these various examples to reveal how interactive creative experiences typically involve extended journeys through hybrid physical and digital realms. Consequently, I will introduce a conceptual framework based on trajectories to guide their design and analysis. Finally, I will draw on my own personal journey over the past fifteen years to reflect on the wider methodological opportunities and challenges of engaging artists in computing research.
Bio:
Steve Benford is Professor of Collaborative Computing in the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham. He is currently an EPSRC Dream Fellow and Director of the EPSRC-funded ‘Horizon: My Life in Data’ CDT. He was the first Visiting Professor at the BBC in 2012 and a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research in 2013. He has received best paper awards at the ACM’s annual Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference in 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2012. He also won the 2003 Prix Ars Elctronica for Interactive Art, the 2007 Nokia Mindtrek award for Innovative Applications of Ubiquitous Computing, and has received four BAFTA nominations. He was elected to the CHI Academy in 2012. His book Performing Mixed Reality was published by MIT Press in 2011.