Is it Art, is it HCI? Exploring Tensions Between Practice and Research Makayla Lewis Kingston University London, UK M.M.Lewis@kingston.ac.uk Miriam Sturdee University of St Andrews St Andrews, Scotland msturdee@gmail.com Mafalda Gamboa Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg, Sweden mafalda.gamboa@chalmers.se Josh Urban Davis Dartmouth College New Hampshire, United States josh.u.davis.gr@dartmouth.edu Sarah Fdili alaoui LRI Paris-Saclay, France saralaoui@lri.fr Claire Elisabeth Ohlenschlager Independent Artist The Hague, Netherlands c.e.ohlenschlager@gmail.com Eli Blevis Indiana University Bloomington, United States eblevis@indiana.edu Bill Gaver Northumbria University Newcastle, United Kingdom w.gaver@northumbria.ac.uk Lian Loke The University of Sydney Sydney, Australia lian.loke@sydney.edu.au ABSTRACT Art has the weight of our history as a people behind it, whilst in comparison, Human-Computer Interaction is relatively young. Artistic practice is a propeller of the innovations within HCI but works in this area often focus on the user study, the interaction, or the need for empirical evaluation. The plurality and tensions in art practice clash with this focus. Arts need not defne the beholder as a ’user’, but the addition of interaction and technology challenges its purpose. Aesthetics in isolation is not seen as impactful output, but as we investigate ways to bring art and HCI together, should we not focus on process and infuence? This panel brings together a diverse group of artists, designers, practitioners, makers, and researchers, focusing on the challenges and variety of approaches in this space. The aim is to build dialogue to encourage a plurality of practices and creative responses in HCI. CCS CONCEPTS · Human-centered computing → Human computer interac- tion (HCI). KEYWORDS Art, Sketching, Dance, Photography, Craft, Making, Sewing, Paint- ing, Comics, Drawing ACM Reference Format: Makayla Lewis, Miriam Sturdee, Mafalda Gamboa, Josh Urban Davis, Sarah Fdili alaoui, Claire Elisabeth Ohlenschlager, Eli Blevis, Bill Gaver, and Lian Loke. 2023. Is it Art, is it HCI? Exploring Tensions Between Practice and Research. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany © 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9422-2/23/04. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3583744 in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3583744 1 INTRODUCTION Human-computer interaction (HCI) has a rich history of interdisci- plinary research borrowing from, and collaborating with, felds as diverse as psychology, material science, and biology. The arts are included in this breadth and diversity of subject matter, but there is a tension between what is defned as ’art’, and what is defned as ’research’ [1, 4, 5, 17]. It could be said that the line is drawn where there is, or is not, documentation of its reception or involvement of the ’user’, but this divide is not so simple to establish. Art is often defned by process, materiality, and output, but equally, we might include design under its umbrella (especially research through de- sign) as following a similar approach. How we defne what ’art’ is in HCI has a lot to do with how we acknowledge it within the research sphere e.g., [4, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18]. How we use art concerns our own competencies and connections. How we value the arts in HCI is a matter of personal approach and opinion. By bringing together those inside and out with this liminal arts space, we might discover how to make room for a new perspective. Art is a millennia-old practice that delights, engages, creates disagreement, forms inquiry, and can be shared, destroyed, or questioned. In this sense, it is valuable for HCI research, as it not only predates it but can support it in a multitude of diferent ways e.g., [11, 13, 19, 20, 22]. When we design and build a prototype, we wish to get feedback, much as an individual artist outside the space may also wish to hear what the audience thinks. Nearly all HCI research follows process, uses ma- terials, iterates, and strives for novelty, creativity, and value. Many researchers are also artists [21], and the line between research and art is drawn in diferent ways. Some might have an art practice in isolation from their research [14], and although it can inform methods by means of fow and mindful practice, others may only use their art as part of their skill set for producing HCI research or teaching others [12]. Some researchers address both approaches [2, 3]. We now also have the confounding aspect of art that is cre- ated by artifcial intelligence or robotics, imagery, or even theatre,