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Intermodulation: Improvisation and Collaborative Art Practice for HCI

Published: 19 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

This paper integrates theory, ethnography, and collaborative artwork to explore improvisational activity as both topic and tool of multidisciplinary HCI inquiry. Building on theories of improvisation drawn from art, music, HCI and social science, and two ethnographic studies based on interviews, participant observation and collaborative art practice, we seek to elucidate the improvisational nature of practice in both art and ordinary action, including human-computer interaction. We identify five key features of improvisational action -- reflexivity, transgression, tension, listening, and interdependence -- and show how these can deepen and extend both linear and open-ended methodologies in HCI and design. We conclude by highlighting collaborative engagement based on 'intermodulation' as a tool of multidisciplinary inquiry for HCI research and design.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2018
8489 pages
ISBN:9781450356206
DOI:10.1145/3173574
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 19 April 2018

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  1. art practice
  2. collaboration
  3. creativity
  4. improvisation

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