Interactive Experience in a Public Context

Zafer Bilda, Ernest Edmonds, Deborah Turnbull Australasian CRC for Interaction Design, Creativity and Cognition Studios University of Technology Sydney, POBox 123 Broadway, NSW, 2007, Australia zafer@it.uts.edu.au , ernest@ernestedmonds.com, deboraht@it.uts.edu.au
ABSTRACT

In this demonstration, we show an interactive artwork that responds to sound and describe a field study evaluating audience engagement within a public context. Audience in the public setting largely recognized the interactivity of the media immediately, engaged very briefly with the work and were highly self conscious about their behavior and voice during their engagement.
Keywords: Interactive media, social interaction, creative engagement, field study ACM Classification Keywords

feasibility test prior to detailed planning for the next stages of the project. It is anticipated that later installations will include multiple distributed screens, using urban screens in Australian and overseas cities. Tango Tangle is concerned with color and sound, in time and through interaction with its environment. The work takes account of the sounds around it, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. It explores ambient influences on its own and on people's behavior. The screen shows various numbers of colored stripes and both the width of the stripes and the color set used change in response to sounds (Figure 1b). The work was driven from a microphone in the square and passers by were invited to talk or sing to the screen by one of the evaluators. Given that they agreed, they were video taped and briefly interviewed afterwards.
METHOD

J.5 [Arts and Humanities]: Arts, fine and performing**; Fine arts
INTRODUCTION

This demonstration is of an interactive artwork that was the subject of a pilot field study in a large open public space, where people might engage with what they see on a big screen. The concept of the project is to install a series of interactive works in Federation Square (Melbourne, Australia) over a one-year period. A key element of the project is to evaluate audience engagement with the works. This first work was Tango Tangle by Ernest Edmonds. It followed a joint work with Mark Fell that had been shown in ACMI, which is part of Federation Square [3].

The colors and the width of the bands in Tango Tangle change in response to differing volume, pitch and rhythm of detected sound. The input device was a wireless microphone which was mobile and carried in the hands of people in Federation Square.

Figure 2 (a) couple interacting with the work (b) one evaluator interviewing a participant
(a) (b)

Figure 1 (a) Public context, Federation Square (b) Screen shots of Tango Tangle Tango Tangle (Figure 1) was installed for a single session and provided the opportunity for a pilot study and
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). C&C07, June 1315, 2007, Washington, DC, USA. ACM 978-1-59593-712-4/07/0006.

Two evaluators were located in a transient spot in Federation Square, in front of the screen to ask people passing by whether they would be interested in participating in a research study by trying out an activity on the big screen. They were not told that this was an interactive media, or an artwork. Participants were given the microphone to hold on to and were prompted to speak or sing to the microphone while they looked at the screen. Subjects were then interviewed based on the same set of questions and they were encouraged to explain their thoughts further by asking clarification prompts/ questions.

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The methods for data collection and analysis built on previous ones used by the team in related situations in a museum space [1,2].
RESULTS

Out of 43 people invited to participate, 20 accepted. From the remaining 23 people, 13 stated they were busy or in a hurry, 6 stated no reason, 3 of them did not want to be involved once they were asked to speak to the microphone, and 1 stated s/he was too old for it. Out of the 20 participants (8 female, 8 male, two male + female couples) who all spoke to the microphone, 1 female participant preferred to sing a little song. 4 participants were in the 40+ age group, and 1 participant was in 0-20 age group. The remaining 15 participants are in the 20-40 group. An average duration of participants engagement was 59 seconds with a standard deviation of 40 seconds. Out of the 20 participants engaging with the work, we had interview data for 15 of them (see sample questions in Appendix). All interviewed participants stated they noticed the change of colors and the width of the color bands on the screen as they spoke to the microphone. All participants also referred to the interaction between sound/voice and changes on the screen. Collated data indicated that Tango Tangle made some participants think of sound waves, sunshine and the horizon. Other participants felt happiness, liveliness, a festive or party feel; while still others thought of rhythm and music or a discotheque. One of the participants thought of a similar past artwork experience in London; another wondered whether his emotions were being mapped with the colors while he spoke; and still another one stated he became self-conscious when he thought he was being monitored. Four of the interviewed participants stated that nothing or not much came to their mind about the experience. We asked whether participants could imagine this installation in another context or space. The responses were quite similar, that it could be in an open space public context as they see currently, in shopping malls, sporting events, rock concerts, in nightclubs, restaurants or dancing halls where high level of sound or music involved. Three participants stated that they would have engaged more comfortably if it was in a museum/art gallery context, and that they would prefer an enclosed space with a feeling of an individual experience rather than an open and social one. As a final question, we asked how this experience can be improved. 7 out of 15 interviewees stated they needed more guidance in terms of cues and prompts as to how they may interact with the work differently. These participants also mentioned that they felt shy or intimidated when they were asked to speak/sing to the microphone, or try out different voices. Two participants stated that the experience would be improved in an immersive/enclosed space, where there would be no interruptions from outside. Four participants

thought that the image was too simple and more variety on the screen would make the experience much better. One participant suggested that this should be a night time experience rather than a daytime experience, because of its ambient and colored nature.
SERENDIPITY

In the afternoon data collection session, musicians started to perform sound checks on the stage below the big screen, in preparation for the jazz concert taking place that night. The sound coming from the instruments was amplified in the square and was affecting the screen directly and immediately. Four participants who experienced the work in the afternoon were less in control of the changes on the screen because of the high volume of the music played on the stage. During the interviews, these participants related their experience more to music and suggested that ambient sound or music in the background would improve peoples experience of the work.
CONCLUSION

This paper presented our evaluation approach and issues that needed consideration for understanding interactive experience in a public context. Tango Tangle by Ernest Edmonds, as installed for a single session in Federation Square, was a pilot study for a series of interactive works installed on a public screen. Audience in the public setting largely recognized the interactivity of the media immediately, engaged very briefly with the work and were highly self conscious about their behavior and voice during their engagement. As the artwork and display were computer, screen and sound based, the technological capabilities of the venue directly affected the way the evaluators collected data, and how they attracted the participants of the study. This research methodology, as well as the data collected, will inform future planning for later stages of the project.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank to the Federation Square staff for their support. This research/work was partly conducted within the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design, which is established and supported under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
REFERENCES

1. Bilda, Z, Candy, L, and Edmonds E. An Embodied Cognition Framework for Interactive Experience, CoDesign. 2007 (to appear) 2. Candy, L., Amitani, S. & Bilda, Z. Practice-Led Strategies for Interactive Art Research, CoDesign, 2006. Vol.2 No. 4. pp 209-223.

3. Edmonds, Ernest. (2006). Abstraction and Interaction:

An Art System for White Noise. Ebad Banissi, et al (Eds). Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation Techniques and Applications. IEEE Computer Society. Los Alamitos, California: 2006. pp 423-427.

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