In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of large-scale centers of command and control that bring together a range of personnel from various services responsible for the management of day-to-day incidents and events. These multicenter control rooms stand in marked contrast to what Suchman termed ‘centers of coordination’ (Suchman 1997), which have typically formed the focus of much research within HCI and Computer supported co-operative work (CSCW). In this paper, we explore the practices and technical resources within one of these very large multicenter control rooms. Staff in this control room do collaborate with colleagues who are copresent, but there is little reliance on the subtle interactional practices found in earlier studies. However, one information system is critical for collaboration and managing incidents that arise: the information system that is used to record incidents. Unlike in previous settings where records were made after an incident had taken place, these records are used for the concurrent management of activities. We consider the practices through which staff assemble these records to serve the demands of different individuals, with differing responsibilities in various organizations within the control room. We consider instances of copresent collaboration and suggest that these are often to ameliorate problems with the records rather than supporting real-time colocated activities. Although staff may be copresent in these multicenter control rooms, they have different kinds of technological resources available to them, and a different ‘division of labor.’ This can undermine the integration of these resources within forms of work. We conclude by discussing the implications for our understanding of copresent work and also for the methods and approaches we can draw upon for understanding these contemporary workplaces.

Auctions, both traditional and electronic, are a pervasive social organisation for the valuation and exchange of goods and services. Despite the long-standing interest in integrating internet contributions into the more traditional auction such initiatives have remained problematic. We consider the organization of interaction of sales of fine art and antiques and develop a prototype 'intelligent' gavel system that is designed to enhance remote participation and ease the flexible ways in which internet contributions are legitimately integrated into live auctions. We present the findings of a quasi-naturalistic experiment involving the use of the system by auctioneers and its consequences for the general development of technologies to support internet participation in live co-located events.

Designing technologies that support the explanation of museum exhibits is a challenging domain. In this paper we develop an innovative approach - providing a robot guide with resources to engage visitors in an interaction about an art exhibit. We draw upon ethnographical fieldwork in an art museum, focusing on how tour guides interrelate talk and visual conduct, specifically how they ask questions of different kinds to engage and involve visitors in lengthy explanations of an exhibit. From this analysis we have developed a robot guide that can coordinate its utterances and body movement to monitor the responses of visitors to these. Detailed analysis of the interaction between the robot and visitors in an art museum suggests that such simple devices derived from the study of human interaction might be useful in engaging visitors in explanations of complex artifacts.

Museums increasingly deploy new technologies to enhance visitors' experience of their exhibitions. They primarily rely on touch-screen computer systems, PDAs and digital audio-guides. Tate Britain recently employed two innovative systems in one of their major exhibitions of John Constable's work; a gestural interface and a touch-screen panel, both connected to large projection screens. This paper reports on the analysis of video-recordings and field observations of visitors' action and interaction. It explores how people interact with and around the systems, how they configure the space around the installation and how they examine and discover their properties. It suggests that designers of interfaces and installations developed for museum exhibitions face particular challenges, such as the transparency of the relationship between people's actions and the system' response, the provision of opportunities for individual and collaborative experiences and the interweaving of technological and aesthetic experiences.

This paper examines the use of an interactive artwork that was designed by members of the research team and exhibited at the Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) Exposition in Chicago, USA. The paper uses audio-visual recordings of interaction with and around the work to consider how people encounter and make sense of an assembly of traditional objects and video technologies. The analysis of action and interaction is used to develop a series of 'design sensitivities' to inform the development of technological assemblies to engender informal interaction and sociability in museums and galleries.

A study of a professional touring mixed reality performance called Desert Rain yields insights into how performers orchestrate players' engagement in an interactive experience. Six players at a time journey through an extended physical and virtual set. Each sees a virtual world projected onto a screen made from a fine water spray. This acts as a traversable interface, supporting the illusion that performers physically pass between real and virtual worlds. Live and video-based observations of Desert Rain, coupled with interviews with players and the production team, have revealed how the performers create conditions for the willing suspension of disbelief, and how they monitor and intervene in the players experience without breaking their engagement. This involves carefully timed performances and “off-face” and “virtual” interventions. In turn, these are supported by the ability to monitor players' physical and virtual activity through asymmetric interfaces.