It’s Art, but is it HCI? – Testing the Boundaries Stephen Boyd Davis Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts, EN4 8HT, UK s.boyd-davis@mdx.ac.uk Abstract The paper begins by noting the ways in which the HCI community increasingly questions the scope of the discipline. A shift is described from a concern with functional efficiency to a broader interest in the overall user experience; this has brought greater prominence to affect, to engagement and pleasure. The paper discusses two issues arising. What evaluation methods and practices are now called for? And what should students learn about the ‘new HCI’? The discussion is illustrated by cases of electronic arts which pose interesting problems for both evaluation and education. What happens when we take the works of digital interaction artists and approach them within an HCI frame of reference? At first sight, most of the approaches inherited from functional HCI seem inappropriate. Is the digital artwork then outside the scope of HCI? Problems are noted of trying to operate across the boundaries of two ‘cultures’, artistic and scientific, showing how concerns which are germane to one community may seem irrelevant to the other. The results of a small survey are reported which cast doubt on any simplistic view. The paper then offers steps towards the application of HCI thinking to these unusual domains. Suggestions are made of how this may alter the scope and methods of HCI in other, mainstream areas. 1 Introduction My aim in this paper is to consider the difficult case of interactive art in order to critique and enrich HCI practice generally. There has already been increased recognition in the HCI community of the importance of factors ‘beyond usability’. Benyon suggests that traditional HCI is ‘inadequate in terms of method, philosophy and concepts to deal with the sort of design and engineering that developing for new technologies demands’ (Benyon, 2003), while Beale thinks that current HCI practice ‘fundamentally fails to convince people that it is useful in designing’ (Beale, 2003). There is an increased interest in engagement and pleasure and a recognition that methods for evaluating task- oriented work-based systems may be inadequate for newly emerging fields (Finlay, 2003; Knight & Jefsioutine, 2003). Now a body of work is building up in relation to fun (Read & MacFarlane, 2000; Pagulayan, Keeker, Wixon, Romero & Fuller, 2003; Dix, 2003; Blythe, Monk, Overbeeke & Wright, 2003); there is a recognition that HCI may need to learn from other, apparently remote fields (Wakkary, Schiphorst, & Budd, 2004; Dourish, Finlay, Sengers & Wright, 2004) and a recent focus on the totality of the user experience (Rozanski & Haake, 2003), an idea explored in the present paper. In the late 1960s and early 70s it was possible to argue that science and art were two modes of a single activity of inquiry (Benthall, 1972), a view epitomized by the seminal Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts in 1968 (Reichardt, 1968). This show has been described as both a beginning and an end in digital art, the latter partly on the grounds that the agendas of technology development and of art afterwards diverged so markedly (Gere, 2002). By 2005 the science of HCI and the practice of Art seem very far apart, even when digital artworks are concerned. Art presents some particular cultural peculiarities which are a challenge to the HCI specialist. Nevertheless, trying to make sense of art, and in particular digital interactive art, can help clarify what exactly we are seeking to evaluate (and how) in other domains. Art generally adopts an agenda to challenge received views and, more specifically sets out to produce some ‘negative’ response in the user, including offence, alienation or puzzlement. This was not always the case. Robert Hughes, in the appropriately named Shock of the New notes how ‘the idea of a cultural avant-garde was unimaginable before 1800’ (Hughes, 1980, p366). The difficulties created for the audience by the artist have become