Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Affective Experiences

The paper critically reflects on the meanings and research on affective experiences in digital mediated environments. Computing, media and design, communication as well as art and cultural products are significantly engaging with aspects of affect and emotions, arguably as a part of the ‘the affective turn’ (Clough 2007). The text considers discussions, initiated at the AHRC funded project ‘New Media, Audiences and Affective Experiences’. The project provided scope for new knowledge and skills development on researching experience and affect in digital mediated platforms and art interventions on the mentioned crossing disciplines. We regard affective experiences as the elusive factor that connects the fields and their practices, requiring attention and unfolding. The project aspired to reveal creative approaches across disciplines that ‘produce and describe’ affective experiences, illustrating how they synthesise and expand the notion of affect. The reflections entail a critical summary of the project’s interventions, including designers and practitioners’ perspectives on elaborating affective aspects in their work. Additionally, issues on multi and interdisciplinary research are considered with the paper portraying a selection of applied research methods for creating and measuring affect online and in research labs as well as the employment of design experimental approaches (see Figure 4). We conclude that some of our initial understanding of affective experiences has been assured; yet, foremost, this reflective paper highlights the complexities of creating, steering, experiencing and evaluating these types of experiences and their constant evolution with creative approaches and emerging technologies.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Marianne Markowski

Irida Ntalla

Christina Kamposiori

Vasileios Routsis

Conference

Publication date: July 2015

Publication date (Print): July 2015

Pages: 163-170

Affiliations

[0001]Middlesex University

The Burroughs

London NW4 4BT, UK

[0002]City University London

Northampton Square

London EC1V 0HB, UK

[0003]University College London

Gower Street

London, WC1E 6BT, UK

[0004]University College London

Gower Street

London, WC1E 6BT, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/eva2015.16

SO-VID: a498d7eb-c4a5-43d0-a972-e134893977df

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2015)

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 7 & 9 July 2015

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/eva2015.16

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

B AkahS Bardzell 2010 Empowering Products: Personal Identity through the Act of Appropriation 4021 4026
L BackN Puwar 2012 Live Methods Wiley-Blackwell
P CloughJ Halley 2007 ‘The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social’, Durham Duke UP
D Ferreday 2009 Online Belongings: Fantasy, Virtuality, Community Peter Lang Oxford
T FlintP Turner 2012 The Role ofAppropriation in the Design of Engaging Artefacts
K Höök 2013 Affective Computing.R. F SoegaardMads and Dam The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (2nd ed.). The Interaction Design Foundation
KlauserKV Walker 2007 It ’ s About Time: An Affective and Desirable Alarm Clock August), 22 25
A Kuntsman 2012 Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change Palgrave Macmillan Basingstoke and New York
B Massumi 1987 Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgements”Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari A Thousand Plateaus Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
J McCarthyP. C Wright 2004 Technology as experience MA MIT Press Cambridge
G Melles 2008 New Pragmatism and the Vocabulary and Metaphors of Scholarly Design Research. Design Issues 24 4),
T MoussouriG Roussos 2011 Automated Analysis of Spatial Behavior at the London Zoo 24th Annual Visitor Studies Association Conference ‘Sustaining a Community of Learners’ 24–27 07 2011 Chicago, Illinois
M MullerS Kuhn 1993 Special issue on Participatory Design. Communications of the ACM 36 4)
I Ntalla 2013 Engaging audiences on on-going social debates through interactive and immersive exhibits. The International Journal of Inclusive Museum 105 116 ISSN: 1835-2014 (print)
I NtallaD Vom Lehn 2014 Researching audiences in digital mediated and interactive experiences: Special Section Introduction. Participation: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 11 1 213 215
N ParryH BendonS Boyd DavisM Magnus 2008 Locating drama: a demonstration of location-aware audio drama International conference on interactive digital storytelling 41 43
D PecherR. A Zwaan 2005 Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language and Thinking Cambridge University Press Cambridge, UK
R. W Picard 2000 Toward computers that recognize and respond to user emotion. IBM Systems Journal 39 705 719 11 1 2006 from Academic Search Premiere electronic database
D. G Richards 1996 The meaning and relevance of ‘synthesis’ in interdisciplinary studies. The Journal of Education 45 2 114 128
K RobertsM RoachJ JohnsonJ GuthrieS Harabagiu 2012 EmpaTweet: Annotating and Detecting Emotions on Twitter. Proceedings of the LREC 3806 3813
P. R Ross 2008 Ethics and aesthetics inintelligent product and system design Technical University Eindhoven, The Netherlands
N Sandiland 2013 Modulation in Interactive Video Installation I NtallaM MarkowskiC KamposioriV Routsis Affectives Experiences 14 London, UK
N SandilandY Flexer 2011 Points of View 2011 FlexerSandiland Retrieved from http://flexerandsandiland.com/archives/nic-sandiland/installations/points-of-view/
D. A Schoen 1991 The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action Ashgate Publishing Limited
D Vom LehnC HeathJ Hindmarsh 2005 Examining exhibits: Interaction in museums and galleries. Communication & Cognition 38 3–4 229 247
S WensveenK OverbeekeT Djajadiningrat 2002 Push me, shove me and I show you how you feel. Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques – DIS ’02, 335 10.1145/778757.77875
M Wetherell 2012 Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding’ Thousand Oaks, CA Sage London
H WitchelC WestlingJ TeeA HealyR NeedhamC Nachiappan 2013 Mean head and shoulder heights when seated: subconscious postural cycles during discrete computerised stimuli Conference on cognitive ergonomics
D Youngblood 2007 Interdisciplinary Studies and the Bridging Discipline: A Matter of Process. Journal of Research Practice 3 2)

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] B AkahS Bardzell 2010 Empowering Products: Personal Identity through the Act of Appropriation 4021 4026

[2] L BackN Puwar 2012 Live Methods Wiley-Blackwell

[3] P CloughJ Halley 2007 ‘The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social’, Durham Duke UP

[4] D Ferreday 2009 Online Belongings: Fantasy, Virtuality, Community Peter Lang Oxford

[5] T FlintP Turner 2012 The Role ofAppropriation in the Design of Engaging Artefacts

[6] K Höök 2013 Affective Computing.R. F SoegaardMads and Dam The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (2nd ed.). The Interaction Design Foundation

[7] KlauserKV Walker 2007 It ’ s About Time: An Affective and Desirable Alarm Clock August), 22 25

[8] A Kuntsman 2012 Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change Palgrave Macmillan Basingstoke and New York

[9] B Massumi 1987 Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgements”Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari A Thousand Plateaus Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press

[10] J McCarthyP. C Wright 2004 Technology as experience MA MIT Press Cambridge

[11] G Melles 2008 New Pragmatism and the Vocabulary and Metaphors of Scholarly Design Research. Design Issues 24 4),

[12] T MoussouriG Roussos 2011 Automated Analysis of Spatial Behavior at the London Zoo 24th Annual Visitor Studies Association Conference ‘Sustaining a Community of Learners’ 24–27 07 2011 Chicago, Illinois

[13] M MullerS Kuhn 1993 Special issue on Participatory Design. Communications of the ACM 36 4)

[14] I Ntalla 2013 Engaging audiences on on-going social debates through interactive and immersive exhibits. The International Journal of Inclusive Museum 105 116 ISSN: 1835-2014 (print)

[15] I NtallaD Vom Lehn 2014 Researching audiences in digital mediated and interactive experiences: Special Section Introduction. Participation: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 11 1 213 215

[16] N ParryH BendonS Boyd DavisM Magnus 2008 Locating drama: a demonstration of location-aware audio drama International conference on interactive digital storytelling 41 43

[17] D PecherR. A Zwaan 2005 Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language and Thinking Cambridge University Press Cambridge, UK

[18] R. W Picard 2000 Toward computers that recognize and respond to user emotion. IBM Systems Journal 39 705 719 11 1 2006 from Academic Search Premiere electronic database

[19] D. G Richards 1996 The meaning and relevance of ‘synthesis’ in interdisciplinary studies. The Journal of Education 45 2 114 128

[20] K RobertsM RoachJ JohnsonJ GuthrieS Harabagiu 2012 EmpaTweet: Annotating and Detecting Emotions on Twitter. Proceedings of the LREC 3806 3813

[21] P. R Ross 2008 Ethics and aesthetics inintelligent product and system design Technical University Eindhoven, The Netherlands

[22] N Sandiland 2013 Modulation in Interactive Video Installation I NtallaM MarkowskiC KamposioriV Routsis Affectives Experiences 14 London, UK

[23] N SandilandY Flexer 2011 Points of View 2011 FlexerSandiland Retrieved from http://flexerandsandiland.com/archives/nic-sandiland/installations/points-of-view/

[24] D. A Schoen 1991 The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action Ashgate Publishing Limited

[25] D Vom LehnC HeathJ Hindmarsh 2005 Examining exhibits: Interaction in museums and galleries. Communication & Cognition 38 3–4 229 247

[26] S WensveenK OverbeekeT Djajadiningrat 2002 Push me, shove me and I show you how you feel. Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques – DIS ’02, 335 10.1145/778757.77875

[27] M Wetherell 2012 Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding’ Thousand Oaks, CA Sage London

[28] H WitchelC WestlingJ TeeA HealyR NeedhamC Nachiappan 2013 Mean head and shoulder heights when seated: subconscious postural cycles during discrete computerised stimuli Conference on cognitive ergonomics

[29] D Youngblood 2007 Interdisciplinary Studies and the Bridging Discipline: A Matter of Process. Journal of Research Practice 3 2)

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