The Arts and Sciences have long been regarded as separated disciplines. In this era of rapidly developing computer technologies a novel interdisciplinary spirit has emerged that promises a new collaboration between research and art. Computer Graphics, Interactive Arts, Scientific Visualization, Artificial Life, Chaos and Complexity, newly emerging Media Museums and Media Centers as well as Telecommunications are areas where artistic thinking influences science and where scientific methodology reaches into the arts.

From media art archeology to contemporary interaction design - the term interface culture is based on a vivid and ongoing discourse in the fields of interactive art, interaction design, game design, tangible interfaces, auditory interfaces, fashionable technologies, wearable devices, intelligent ambiences, sensor technologies, telecommunication and new experimental forms of human-machine, human-human and machine-machine interactions and the cultural discourse surrounding them. This book's aim is to give an overview of the current state of interactive art and interface technology as well as an outlook on new forms of hybridization in art, media, scientific research and every-day media applications.

Artists and creators in interactive art and interaction design have long been conducting research on human-machine interaction. Through artistic, conceptual, social and critical projects, they have shown how interactive digital processes are essential elements for their artistic creations. Resulting prototypes have often reached beyond the art arena into areas such as mobile computing, intelligent ambiences, intelligent architecture, fashionable technologies, ubiquitous computing and pervasive gaming. Many of the early artist-developed interactive technologies have influenced new design practices, products and services of today's media society. This book brings together key theoreticians and practitioners of this field. It shows how historically relevant the issues of interaction and interface design are, as they can be analyzed not only from an engineering point of view but from a social, artistic and conceptual, and even commercial angle as well.

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are two of the most innovative and internationally renowned media artists and researchers. Their work has been called "epoch-making" (Toshiharu Itoh, NTT-ICC Museum, Tokyo) for developing natural and intuitive interfaces and for applying scientific principles such as artificial life, complexity, generative systems and nanotechnologies to their innovative interface design. This monograph represents a comprehensive overview of Sommerer and Mignonneau’s art and research. In addition to providing detailed project descriptions of each interactive artwork, it includes essays and articles by highly recognized media scholars and theoreticians who bring the interactive artworks of Sommerer and Mignonneau in an art and media art history perspective.

“More than a cabinet of curiosities, more than a terrarium, more than an aquarium”: a captivating look at thirty years of artistic work by the Austrian-French artist duo Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. Working at the intersection of natural science, technology, and art, Austrian-French artist duo Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau pioneered the “Art of Interface”—innovative technical interfaces that enable physical interaction between simulative visual worlds and the world of natural sensory organs. Early on, the pair used algorithms to represent not only forms of the living but also their evolution and growth. Edited by Karin Ohlenschläger, Peter Weibel, and Alfred Weidinger, this publication in the Leonardo book series brings together key works of the artists since the early 1990s in pictures and text contextualized by renowned international authors: Reinhard Kannonier, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Birgit Mersmann, Tomoe Moriyama, Karin Ohlenschläger, Ingeborg Reichle, and Siegfried Zielinski. In the artists’ installations, which are possible only through interactions with the viewer, devices designed by the artist couple produce novel virtual realities and immersive environments. In “Portrait on the Fly,” for instance, a viewer stands in front of an interactive plasma screen, behind which a swarm of thousands of flies is moving. Gradually, the flies settle on the shadowed areas of the projection, thereby collectively reproducing the person’s likeness. Works such as these, now almost classics of digital art, open a new horizon in which artworks can function as living systems. As Peter Weibel writes, their work is “more than a cabinet of curiosities, more than a terrarium, more than an aquarium; it shows mythical creatures, artificial creatures, [and] a so far unseen panorama of imagination and technical ingenuity.”

A multidisciplinary introduction to the field of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. As algorithms get smarter, what role will computers play in the creation of music, art, and other cultural artifacts? Will they be able to create such things from the ground up, and will such creations be meaningful? In Beyond the Creative Species, Oliver Bown offers a multidisciplinary examination of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, design, social theory, the psychology of creativity, and creative practice research, Bown argues that to understand computational creativity, we must not only consider what computationally creative algorithms actually do, but also examine creative artistic activity itself.

An overview of the art historical antecedents to virtual reality and the impact of virtual reality on contemporary conceptions of art.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction /Howard Rheingold -- Overview /Martin Rieser -- Pockets of Plenty: An Archaeology of Mobile Media /Erkki Huhtamo -- The Temporal and Spatial Design of Video and Film-based Installation Art in the 60s and 70s: Their Inherent Perception Processes and Effects on the Perceivers' Actions /Susanne Jaschko -- Forgotten Histories of Interactive Space /Martin Rieser -- Art by Telephone: From Static to Mobile Interfaces /Adriana de Souza e Silva -- Mobile/Audience: Thinking the Contradictions /Mary Griffiths and Sean Cubitt -- Towards a Language of Mobile Media /Jon Dovey and Constance Fleuriot -- Snapshots from Curating Mobility: (If you build it, they won't necessarily come) /Beryl Graham -- Beyond Mapping: New Strategies for Meaning in Locative Artworks /Martin Rieser -- Digital Media and Architecture--An Observation /Anke Jacob -- Urban Screens as the Visualization Zone of the City's Invisible Communication Sphere /Mirjam Struppek -- Future Physical: The Creative User and theme of response-ABILITY /Debbi Lander -- 'A Fracture in Reality': Networked Narratives as Imaginary Fields of Action and Dislocation /Andrea Zapp -- What makes mediascapes compelling?:Insights from the Riot! 1831 case-study /Josephine Reid and Richard Hull -- Hopstory: A study in place-based, historically inspired narrative /Valentina Nisi and Glorianna Davenport -- The Media Portrait of Liberties: A Non-linear Community Portrait /Valentina Nisi , Mads Haahr and Glorianna Davenport -- Loca: 'Location Oriented Critical Arts' /Drew Hemment , John Evans , Mika Raento and Theo Humphries -- Invisible Topographies /Usman Haque -- Wifi-Hog: The Battle for Ownership in Public Wireless Space /Jonah Brucker-Cohen -- Puppeteers, Performers or Avatars: A Perceptual Difference in Telematic Space /Paul Sermon -- Mobile Feelings: Wireless Communication of Heartbeat and Breath for Mobile Art /Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau -- The Living Room /Victoria Fang -- tunA and the Power of Proximity /Arianna Bassoli -- Engagement with the Everyday /Margot Jacobs -- Between Improvisation and Publication: Supporting the Creative Metamorphosis with Technology /Cati Vaucelle -- Developing Creative Audience Interaction: Four Projects by Squidsoup. /Anthony Rowe -- The Emotional Wardrobe /Lisa Stead , Petar Goulev , Caroline Evans and Ebrahim Mamdani -- Social Fashioning and Active Conduits /Katherine Moriwaki -- Wunderkammer: Wearables as an Artistic Strategy /Laura Beloff -- Flirt and Mset /Fiona Raby -- Trace, The Choreography of Everyday Movement and Drift /Teri Rueb -- Blast Theory /Matt Adams -- Mixed Reality Lab /Steve Benford -- The Politics of Mobility /Drew Hemment -- Memory-Rich Garments and Social Interaction /Joey Berzowska -- Heart on Your Sleeve /Annie Lovejoy -- Contributor Biographies -- Glossary -- Selected Bibliography Books and Articles.

The application of the theory and practice of art to computer science: how aesthetics and art can play a role in computing disciplines.

The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World is an interdisciplinary collection of essays in the emerging field of Plant Studies. The volume is the first of its kind to bring together a dynamic body of scholarship that shares a critique of long-standing human perceptions of plants as lacking autonomy, agency, consciousness, and, intelligence. The leading metaphor of the book—“the green thread”, echoing poet Dylan Thomas’ phrase “the green fuse”—carries multiple meanings. On a more apparent level, “the green thread” is what weaves together the diverse approaches of this collection: an interest in the vegetal that goes beyond single disciplines and specialist discourses, and one that not only encourages but necessitates interdisciplinary and even interspecies dialogue. On another level, “the green thread” links creative and historical productions to the materiality of the vegetal—a reality reflecting our symbiosis with oxygen-producing beings. In short, The Green Thread refers to the conversations about plants that transcend strict disciplinary boundaries as well as to the possibility of dialogue with plants.