Research This project is part of a research collaboration with Patrick Olivier (Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK) Peter Wright (Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK) Jayne Wallace (Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK) Pierre Boulanger (Advanced Man-Machine Interface Laboratory, University of Alberta, Canada) Our research team is composed of artists, musicians, and computer scientists. Our method of practice based research uses art to explore human-computer interaction. Our roles as art practitioners and performers as well as interaction designers place us uniquely in situ during the execution and evaluation of the ongoing performance, as we collaborate with our participants to shape, develop, and understand a shared and co-created aesthetic experience. Technologically mediated interactive performance practice facilitates audience participation and involvement by allowing participants to manipulate, affect, and essentially co-create the development of a responsive performance. Through this enabling of collaboration, the format of participatory performance allows an artist to directly engage and interact with his/her audience. The touch-sensitive humanaquarium interface makes the dialogue between performer and audience visible, tangible, legible, and direct, and provides a focal point for the performance as well as a uniquely immersicw manner of exploring how people choose to interact in creative public spaces. (return to main page)