In case anyone is interested in attending!
Maureen
From the Margin to the Center: Exploring
"Artsy" Human Centered Computing
Abstract:
Although HCI has traditionally anchored itself
epistemologically between the twin rocks of engineering/computer science and
cognitive/laboratory behavioral science, contemporary HCI practice has been
additionally enriched by a diverse array of disciplinary ways of knowing, from
qualitative social science to product design to network analysis.
Recently, we have seen an upswell in interest in
the arts, which offers new opportunities for conceiving of and designing for
interaction, but simultaneously provides challenges for our traditional
conceptualizations of what it means to do and to know in HCI. Given that
intellectual issues in the contemporary arts are relatively unknown in our
field, the status of arts-based work as research can be unclear to HCI researchers. When
work in the field is labelled "artsy," this can often imply that it
is pretty but not practical, creative but not generalizable, provocative but
not a fundamental knowledge contribution, interesting but not valid until
recast as science. The result is a missed opportunity, a marginalization
of the insights the arts could offer us.
In this talk, I will explore what it might mean
to take the arts seriously as a way of knowing and as an intellectual resource
for HCI practictioners. I will describe a design experiment through which
my group realized both the value of an aesthetic approach to affective
computing and the deep-seated consequences of an aesthetic orientation for
design and evaluation. I will argue that the arts provide a unique lens into
design for the political, social, and personal dimensions of
computing. Through analyses my group has conducted of the uptake of
cultural probes and Situationism in HCI, I will explore the challenges and
opportunities that the arts offer HCI.
Bio:
Phoebe Sengers is an assistant professor in
Information Science and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell, where she
leads the Culturally Embedded Computing group. She works at the intersection of
HCI with cultural studies of technology, developing applications that respond
to and encourage critical reflection on the place of technology in culture. She
uses insights from cultural analysis of IT to identify and rethink the
assumptions underlying technologies, to build systems to support critical
reflection on emotional and social experiences, and to develop new techniques
for designing systems, including the use of self-experiment in design and new
forms of evaluation for open-ended systems. Before coming to Cornell, she
worked as a research scientist in the Media Arts Research Studies group at the
German National Computer Science Research Center (GMD) and was a Fulbright
Scholar at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in
Lunch will be rolled sandwiches (hovan-style)
from St Charles Deli. Lunch wil be ready by 11:30; the talk begins at
12:00.
Thank you.
Don
Don Schoner
Assistant to Director of GVU
Georgia Institute
of Technology
Phone: 404-894-4488
Direct Line: 404-894-0075
Fax: 404-385-2386
Fax: 404-894-0673
"One thing about trains: it doesn't matter
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--The Polar Express