Reflections on interactive art and practitioner research: establishing a frame

The essay is in two parts: the first precedes and the second follows the chapters giving accounts of practitioner research and the second. The first part reprises ideas articulated in Scrivener's prior research, which are proposed as a lens through which to interpret the practitioner research chapters; the second part then examines the extent the research material examined resists or complies with this research frame. In the process the concept of projective reflective practice is distinguished, which it is argued is overlooked in Donald Schön’s theory of reflective practice because the practitioner situation is assumed as given rather than created.

The book is about interacting in its many forms, including interaction between artworks and audiences, between creative practitioners from different disciplines and between those practitioners and the norms of research in contemporary society. Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner uses the experience of leading creative practitioners to provide a unique perspective on these interacting elements.

Interacting gives a primary voice to practitioner researchers in the emerging academic discourse about creative practice and research, a voice which has been somewhat muted in debates about the nature of practitioner knowledge and the role of the artefact in knowledge creation. By creating and evaluating interactive artworks, the contributors challenge existing notions about the role of research in practice, and their accounts provide fascinating insights into the growing phenomenon of artworks shaped by the audiences who interact with them.

As workers within the field of human–computer interaction, the editors’ interest in creativity in art, design and technology has led them to develop methodologies for research capable of producing evidence simultaneously with the creation of new artefacts. They and the other contributors, all of whom have been associated with the Creativity and Cognition Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney, demonstrate both that there is much to recommend in the bringing of research into creative practice and also that research itself can be transformed by way of creative practice.

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