>> Hello everyone, my name is Rocio von Jungenfeld and I'm a lecturer in digital media at the School of Engineering and Digital Arts here at the University of Kent.

>> I am part of the research group, Intelligent interactions, and today I'm going to be talking to you about my research in the area of digital arts and most specifically about the role of technology in the production of participatory digital artworks.

>> My research focuses on art in public space, and this means that I sometimes, very often, I have to deal with several components.

>> This means that I have to work in a multidisciplinary context and that I deal with devices, technology, digital content, as well as with humans - people. And with their interactions with each other, with the interactions that they have with the technology itself and also their interactions with the environment.

>> I'm interested in understanding how we, humans, and the things around us share and perceive the world, and in how all these things, the human and non-human things are constantly shaping and co-creating each other and co-producing the environments.

>> The big question for me really is, how do we integrate digital artworks into the environment and also how do we incorporate them into everyday life?

>> In order to do this I look at how we can use public space to share and collectively interact with technology.

>> In my research I started by looking at how to use the metaphor of the wool thread, as you can see in this image, to enable me to connect physical sites and digital content. But this metaphor, which I based on the work of Professor Tim Ingold, can only take us so far. It is at least a starting point.
 
>> I became curious about how to detach digital artworks from the physical constraints of architectural spaces. By this I mean how can we detach digital artworks from a room which has electricity and therefore power sockets? How can we take the work somewhere else?
 
>> My goal is to enable people to move around, to walk in a particular site, and more importantly, I want people to be co-producers of the artworks rather than consumers.
 
>> This has led me to produce a series of video walks for public space and working with such sites, for instance a park or a public building, has several challenges but it enables us to test how different displays and how the different number of devices that we might have have an effect on the way that participants act and perceive the work, and also about the interactions between participants and the things that are present in the environment.

>> So, for instance, while using a digital screen like most of us have we tend to, kind of, retreat into what Ito, Okabe and Anderson call cocoons. So we have all seen this we all very often are the ones that retreat into these cocoons, and yeah we focus on the screen and we are physically present here but in fact we are somewhere else, we are somewhere in between.

>> On the other hand we could also use projections to enhance the environment to project out of the environment and I'm going to give you a demonstration with a projection and I'm going to ask to get the lights down if possible. So let me let me introduce you to the little projector. You can basically use the projector, because it's portable, you can go anywhere. You can take it with you as you walk along and you can use any surface around you which is within reach of the projector to use it as a projection screen so we can see that we can use our flesh, our skin, as a projection screen.

>> We could use our clothes and then you can also go and project onto any surface, you can project on the floor as you walk or you an project on a tree or on a bench or anything that really is around you, and you don't have to be physically static - you can move with it. And then you can use the wheel to focus your image depending on how far away from the surface you are and you can turn it as well so you can use your body to to modify the projection depending on the surface.

>> Very often people try to match the textures that are in the environment with the images that are projected.

>> So, on the other hand, when digital content is projected onto the environment the action happens somewhere else, it happens outside this device. This opens the possibilities of merging the physical and the digital, and it also opens the possibilities for sharing the experiences and co-producing digital artworks.

>> When we have the projection available or when there is media embedded into the environment it is much easier to become part of it and to become part of this shared experience.

>> Part of my research involves developing tools and methods to analyse the interactions between the different things that are part of a particular environment or a site.

>> In controlled environments, human-computer interaction researchers often use a combination of biometric measuring approaches, but in public space this is really tricky. Gathering this type of data is difficult. 

>> For instance, gathering heart rates or eye movements or brainwave, brain activity, it's really complicated if not almost impossible. Especially if we take into account the number of participants that we might have invited to a particular event like a video walk or if we take into the account that the specific conditions of the sites would make this very challenging.

>> For instance, a park at night. In order to overcome this challenge, and drawing on discourses that are established about how things are interconnected, I have developed a method  that enables me to analyse visual documentation - the results - from video walks. This other visual documentation serves as evidence of the interactions between the different agents in the site so it serves as evidence of the interactions between humans, technology and the site. The method consists of a three lens approach.

>> Okay, 1) Tim Ingold's SPIDER approach 2) Bruno Latour's ANT (Actor-Network-Theory) approach, then, 3) Manuel DeLanda's ASSEMBLAGE approach which he bases on Deleuze and Guattari's work. And yes this might all seem very abstract and theoretical so let's not dwell on it and look at some concrete examples.

>> Here is an example of a SPIDER approach, this means that we look into the documentation and we follow one particular thread and we look at how the thread develops over time and we are looking from within the thread so within this footage at how the actions are interconnected.

>> An example here, where we are following a camera that is going along with participants on this video walk. So we are recording along with those people that are experiencing the work.

>> Here is an example of ANT (Actor-Network-Theory) approach, and this means that we look at one particular instance of our raw footage. We look at one frame from all this footage that we have. And there we look at the connections between the things between the actors in the image. And we look at it from a detached point of view, so we are not inside the thread, we are really literally outside, we are outsiders to this frame.

>> If we look at this example we can see that there is a hand, there is a bench, there is a projection, there's a light beam, there is an image, a plate, some droplets. There are several elements that are actively creating this image and they're all contributing and acting in a way.

>> Here is another example. And in this one I've selected some instances from raw video footage, where although there's different instances in the event they are very similar in the way that the actors, so the different things in the frame, are performing the roles. So we have some projections, some faces, people, and the things in the site are acting in a similar way, have similar roles.

>> And then 3) ASSEMBLAGE approach. And what this means is we follow multiple threads simultaneously but at the same time what we are doing is we are finding a point in which these different threads are converging and we analyse those instances. So, for instance, what we want to look at is how different agents strengthen or modify the relations over time.

>> In this image, we have two people that are participating at the same time and they are converging on this one element, which is the images that you see below, and they are looking at this event, we are looking at this event from two separate perspectives. We are following the perspective at the point of view of the person on the right and the perspective of the person on the left. We can see the images that they're producing there just below and they are colliding, their threads are converging and we can look at how these two threads converge and come together and analyse how they are related. From an assemblage point of view, we can also look at how things are simultaneously part of several assemblages.

>> So, for instance, in this case we'll see a bag and this bag is normally a carrier so it has the belongings of the person that is carrying it so it has this role of being a carrier. But at the same time we can say here it becomes a projection surface so it can play different roles, it can have different roles, depending on what aspects of itself are activated.

>> Moving on and building on this three length method approach, I want to talk to you about Lichtsuchende which is an ongoing project in collaboration with Doctor Dave Murray-Rust from the design informatics at the University of Edinburgh and we are investigating the relations between robotics and robot creatures, humans and the environments that they share and co-create. As you can see here you can see Lichtsuchende in action. Lichtsuchende is a photo kinetic installation which invites people to use a torch to interact with a society of light-seeking robots.

>> My collaborator Dave and I are currently looking at visual footage that we gathered to investigate how different points of view converge in this installation. So we gathered footage from different points of view, different agents in the installation. We gathered footage from a detached point of view, from the person's point of view, from the little robot's point of view to see how these elements are connected and where they converge. Our aim is to better understand these relations between the agents to understand how they see, react and relate to each other and create this world.

>> As an early career research based at the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, I feel supported to continue investigating how humans and technology interact and co-create their environment.

>> Thank you very much.