We present the design of the Memory Machine (MeMa), a technology probe that can store, contextualise, and document media to represent memories. We accumulate vast physical and digital possessions throughout our lives, making it difficult to distinguish value in amassed images, albums, videos, mementos, and music. One option we wanted to explore via MeMa was to frame personal memories as a gift, in turn providing a way to revisit, share, and collate personal archives. We deployed MeMa into participants’ homes and tasked them to create a digital gift involving an autobiographical memory. Through qualitative methods we uncovered the experience of twelve gift-givers. We found that the framing as a gift brought meaning to a collection of media, promoting reflection and emotional reminiscence in participants. Our contributions include design implications involving the relationship between emotions, technology, and gifting.

Interactive mirrors, typically combining semi-transparent mirrors, digital screens and interaction mechanisms have been developed for a variety of application areas. Drawing on existing techniques to create interactive mirror spaces, we investigated their performative qualities through artistic discovery and collaborative prototyping. We document a linked set of design explorations and two public, site-specific experiences that brought together artists, communities, and HCI researchers. We illustrate the abstracted interactive mirror space that practitioners in the performance art, theatre and museum sectors can work with. In turn, we also discuss six performative design strategies concerning the use of physical context, movement and narrative that HCI researchers who wish to deploy interactive mirrors in more mainstream settings need to consider.

This paper responds to an increasing interest in how data-driven interactive artworks can support a greater understanding of the relationship between humans and data. This paper extends this work by focusing on the The Prediction Machine, an interactive and data-driven artwork that arose from collaborations between an artist, climate scientists, HCI researchers and the wider public. A study of the practice-led process reveals: (a) how the artist "performed" scientific data across multiple outputs; (b) how the artist walked a line between scientific and artistic process; (c) how the public experienced data across multiple components of the artwork; (d) how the artwork can be seen as process rather than a exhibition or artifact; and (e) how tensions between artistic strategies and scientific processes inherent in the creation of data-driven artworks might inform future work involving public engagement with scientific data.

We explore the ethical implications of HCI's turn to the ‘cultural’. This is motivated by an awareness of how cultural applications, in our case interactive performances, raise ethical issues that may challenge established research ethics processes. We review research ethics, HCI's engagement with ethics and the ethics of theatrical performance. Following an approach grounded in Responsible Research Innovation, we present the findings from a workshop in which artists, curators, commissioners, and researchers explored ethical challenges revealed by four case studies. We identify six ethical challenges for HCI's engagement with cultural applications: transgression, boundaries, consent, withdrawal, data, and integrity. We discuss two broader implications of these: managing tensions between multiple overlapping ethical frames; and the importance of managing ethical challenges during and after an experience as well as beforehand. Finally, we discuss how our findings extend previous discussions of Value Sensitive Design in HCI.

A study of an interactive artwork shows how artists engaged the public with scientific climate change data. The artwork visualised live environmental data collected from remote trees, alongside both historical and forecast global CO2 data. Visitors also took part in a mobile sensing experience in a nearby forest. Our study draws on the perspectives of the artists, visitors and a climate scientist to reveal how the work was designed and experienced. We show that the artists adopted a distinct approach that fostered an emotional engagement with data rather than an informative or persuasive one. We chart the performative strategies they used to achieve this including sensory engagement with data, a temporal structure that balanced liveness with slowness, and the juxtaposition of different treatments of the data to enable interpretation and dialogue.

Ubiquitous and pervasive computing techniques have been used to inform discourses around climate change and energy insecurity, traditionally through data capture and representation for scientists, policy makers and the public. Research into re-engaging the public with sustainability and climate change issues reveals the significance of emotional and personal engagement alongside locally meaningful, globally-relevant and data-informed climate messaging for the public. New ubiquitous and pervasive computing techniques are emerging to support the next generation of climate change stakeholders, including artists, community practitioners, educators and data hackers, to create scientific data responsive artworks and performances. Grounded in our experiences of community based artistic interventions, we explore the design and deployments of the Timestreams platform, demonstrating usages of ubiquitous and pervasive computing within these new forms of discourse around climate change and energy insecurity.

The paper introduces a pervasive digital artwork which harnesses live heart-rate and GPS data to create a novel experience on a Pocket PC. The aims of the project, the technologies employed and the results of a preliminary trial are briefly described.