Macaroni Synthesis: A Creative Multimedia Collaboration Ernest Edmonds 1 , Linda Candy 2 , Mark Fell 3 , Roger Knott 3 , Alastair Weakley 1 ernest@ernestedmonds.com linda@lindacandy.com mark@markfell.com r.p.knott@lboro.ac.uk alastair@weakley.org.uk 1 Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology, Sydney, PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia 2 Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition School of Architecture, Design Sciences and Planning University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia 3 Creativity and Cognition Research Studios Department of Computer Science Loughborough University, LE11 3TU UK Abstract The paper describes a collaborative project between an HCI team and an internationally known Japanese artist, based in New York, who was artist-in-residence with the group in the UK. The collaboration resulted in a new performance art work and a new interactive instrument. The research included a full study of the process of collaboration and innovation. The paper describes the work that was created, the interactive instrument developed and illustrates its use in a performance. 1. Introduction The Creativity and Cognition Research Studios (C&CRS) [6] were established for the purposes of developing new art and technology projects and to conduct research into the creative process. It is the result of a collaborative venture between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Art and Design at Loughborough University. In the COSTART Project 1998-2003 [5] an innovative approach to the study of technology-based art founded on practice-led research methods has been developed. The approach is based upon artist-in-residency studies, gathering and analysing qualitative data and disseminating new knowledge on the basis of the evidence [2,3,4,11]. Research issues that are under investigation at C&CRS include: the impact of the technology on creative practice, the implications of such practice for technological requirements and the environments in which new developments can take place. The work centers on the practice of art making. The involvement of the artists in the electronic media is as much concerned with developing and defining those media as with employing them in art making. Whilst art and design oriented application programs are often used, the art practice is normally dependant upon writing computer programs, often interfaces between the various devices needed to facilitate interaction. The artists at the leading edge of technology-based work are rarely confined to using single software applications that can be bought on the high street. Instead, they are most often seen to be extending the media and exploring the means of developing new technological capabilities. As is often the case in innovative art making, artists are deeply involved in inventing and defining the media that they use. If this requires new knowledge and skills, they acquire it either by learning it for themselves or through their collaborators. For this reason, collaborations with technical experts who can construct and extend the technology are becoming a vital element of the work. In this respect, a significant development is the invention of computational representations of the conceptual and behavioral concepts that underpin much of the art being developed. In this paper, we report on the particular innovations associated with one of the residencies; that of Yasunao Tone, an artist who was awarded the 2002 Ars Electronica Golden Nica prize for Digital Music [10] The residency involved three significant interacting roles: the artist, the technologist and the researcher. This three-pronged approach is fundamental to the research and has been significant in enabling and fulfilling the kind of innovation described here. 2. Background The COSTART Project developed a new approach to the study of technology-based art founded on practice-led Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information Visualization (IV’03) 1093-9547/03 $17.00 © 2003 IEEE