Towards Good Software Engineering Practices in

Interactive Installation Art

Anna Trifonova Letizia Jaccheri
Department of Computer and Information Science Department of Computer and Information Science
Norwegian University of Science and Technology Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Sem Saelands vei 7-9 Sem Saelands vei 7-9
7491 Trondheim, Norway 7491 Trondheim, Norway
trifonova@[Link] letizia@[Link]

ABSTRACT
Software engineering products and processes are important in the
1. INTRODUCTION
As software becomes more and more important in all aspects of
production of new media art as new media artworks heavily
business and life, software practitioners cooperate with experts
depends on software. We have run a literature review and
from disparate fields, like banking, automobile industry, health
analyzed papers published in computer science journals and
sector, and cultural institutions. As a consequence, the software
conferences to establish a knowledge base of the multidisciplinary
engineering research community has the challenge to provide
field of software engineering and art with focus on interactive
good practices that are specific for the multidisciplinary domains.
installation art. In addition we have observed several projects of
Computer art is an important example of a multidisciplinary field
new media art production.
at the intersection between computing and art.
This paper presents the findings of our review of interactive art
Computer art dates back to the 60s. The first computer art
installation. It organizes the theme according to five concepts
exhibition took place at Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart in
which are: requirements, architecture, validation, process, and
1965. The same year at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York
tools. Furthermore, we compare our findings with the general
City the earliest computer art exhibition took place in the United
practices in contemporary software development. We discuss
States [5]. The first software engineering (SE) conference was
which issues are peculiar for software intensive art projects and
held in Garmish in 1968 [16]. Software engineering and computer
need further software engineering research: 1) Experimentation as
art, blooming at the same time, have met several times, even if
a working style of artists; 2) Entertainment or reflection as a final
these relationships may not have been rendered explicit.
goal; 3) Ideological influence on the choice of technology.
The use of digital technology in contemporary art is often referred
This information should help researchers who work at the
to as new media art. Since the early 90s within the new media art
intersection between software engineering and the new media art
realm there is a growing production of interactive art installations.
as it provides a map of the published literature and outlines which
These artworks are generally complex and they are heavily
research issues are peculiar of this multidisciplinary field.
dependent on software for controlling the whole system. The
production of the software often requires the involvement of
Categories and Subject Descriptors programmers and software engineers.
D.2.0 [Software Engineering]: General; J.5. [Arts and
Humanities]: Performing Arts. In 2005 Briony Oates [17] proposes to extend Information
Systems (IS) research agenda in the domain of computer art. The
first suggestion is that “computer art might be seen as a kind of
General Terms information system”. We build up on this idea by giving a
Management, Documentation, Design, Human Factors. concrete example of an artistic discipline (i.e. interactive
installation art) which intersects with software engineering.
Keywords Schematically, a software engineering product might be presented
Software Engineering; New Media Art; Interactive Installation as a black box that receives a digital input, processes it and the
Art; Development of Interactive Installations. result is outputted to the user. Interactive installations might be
mapped to this schema, as they receive certain input that is
digitally processed and the output is given back to the audience.
We, further, study from SE perspective the production of
interactive installations.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are The field of software engineering has a well established
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that knowledge base (e.g. SWEBOK [2]) of foundations and
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy methodologies, with many books available on the market, many
otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, conferences organized yearly and active research bodies. For the
requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. multidisciplinary field of software engineering and art there is
Conference’04, Month 1–2, 2004, City, State, Country. little established knowledge base [1, 15, 17, 25]. This field is
Copyright 2004 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0004…$5.00.
young and there are not specialized journals like in other visual reality and human experience, i.e. images, text-based and
multidisciplinary fields, like automotive software and information audio-visual narratives – what we normally understand by
and communication technology for health. The first step to "culture". The "new" data is numerical data.” [14]. As software
establish such knowledge base is to perform a literature review engineers, we have to be critical to the notion of new media as
[18] and determine what has been published until now in this area what used to be new in the early 90´s, for example the HTML
by researchers and practitioners. language and web browsers, is now main stream technology. Web
2.0 which can be regarded as new at the time of writing will not
Within the Software Engineering group of the Norwegian
be new in a couple of years from now.
University of Science and Technology (NTNU) we have started a
project, called SArt, in which software engineering research will Installation art is a phenomenon which starts in the late 30s with
be conducted on art as target domain artists like Duchamp. Interactive installations are the evolution of
([Link] installation art and are a part of new media art, because of “their
origins in, and reliance upon, computer-based technology” [22].
We have started a systematic literature review with a broad focus
An interactive installation includes a physical construction which
following the guidelines in [11]. The full review, which covers
is generally placed in a public space. Usually certain parts of the
many artistic disciplines in which software is used, is not
installation are changing in time (e.g. video, audio, mechanical
completed yet, but detailed description of the process we follow
parts movement, etc.). Often these changes are due to spectator(s)
and the preliminary results are available in [25]. Part of the
presence and/or action(s). The creation of an interactive
review about interactive installations is considered complete. In
installation commonly requires specialists with different areas of
this paper we present some of the outcomes of the review - the
competence to collaborate with the artist1. A multidisciplinary
reported in the literature software engineering practices in
team can involve artists (painters, composers, sculptors, etc.),
interactive installation projects. Furthermore, we compare these
constructors, hardware designers, electrical engineers, software
practices with the practices in contemporary information systems
engineers, programmers, art curators, etc.
development (ISD). This allows us to identify which
characteristics are peculiar for art projects and deserve further Interactivity is a major issue in interactive installations. Different
research attention. interactivity types might be defined. In fact, interaction is
extensively discussed in [almost] all articles describing interactive
As part of SArt we are involved in three projects where the teams
installations (e.g. [6, 8, 21]).
include both artists and software developers. The main objective
of each of these projects is the production of an interactive art In our viewpoint there are three perspectives of the interaction
installation. These projects serve us as researchers in SE as case that have to be taken into consideration:
studies to gain deeper understanding on the emerging issues and
- Interaction Rules – the rules that control the interaction might
problems. We act as observers, often participating at projects’
be static or dynamic. Static rules are defined in advance and
meetings, following the communication between the members and
the dynamicity of the interaction depends on the triggering
analyzing produced documentation. We give a description of one
parameters. In other words, when the interaction rules are
of the projects further in the paper (see Flyndre in section 2) and
static if the same triggering parameters are inputted twice the
show in which parts of the interactive installation software is
response/reaction will be the same in both cases. On the other
required and developed. We also show the roles of the software
hand, dynamic rules are dynamically modified, thus that even
developers and the artist in such projects.
with repeating input parameters the interactivity changes. The
Further the article is organized as follows: section 2 is dedicated evolutionary interaction described in [21] might be considered
to an introduction of the targeted application domain - new media dynamic interaction rules, but limits the rules to evolutionary
art field and its subclass interactive installation art. We give an algorithms. In [6] this difference between static and dynamic
example of an interactive installation, pointing out the needs of rules is shown by introducing the dynamic interactive
software development in different levels. Section 3 summarizes (varying) category of interactivity.
the outcomes of a literature review of software engineering
- Triggering parameters – The interaction rules generally
practices in interactive installation art projects which are later (in
depend on environment parameters that are changed during
section 4) compared with the persistent SE problems. In section 5
the artwork exhibition. Most often the audience is directly
we list the peculiarities in art projects. Section 6 is dedicated to a
participating in the interaction intentionally, but it is possible
short discussion, conclusions and future work. Finally,
that no intention is required and only the spectators’ presence
acknowledgements (7) are followed by references (8).
is enough to trigger the interaction rules. However, in some
cases the changes in the artwork might not depend on the
2. NEW MEDIA ART AND INTERACTIVE audience at all, but only on the environment – such option is
INSTALLATION ART
New media art is a subclass of contemporary art that involves the
1
use of new media technology. We point to the work of new media We often talk about the artist and/or developer (in singular) for
art theoreticians like Manovich [13] and Tribe et al. [24]. simplicity, although there might be cases where a group of
Manovich gives an explanation of what artists intend as new in artists/developers (two or more) are working together on the
the new media: “... new media today can be understood as the mix same artwork, either simultaneously on the whole work or on
between older cultural conventions for data representation, access different parts of it (e.g. one artist on the music components,
and manipulation and newer conventions of data representation, another on the visualisation; one software engineer on the
access and manipulation. The "old" data are representations of software architecture and another on implementation, etc.)
 foreseen only in [6] with the dynamic-passive interaction installation is the music. It includes samples pre-defined by the
category. composer, which are combined with and overlaid by the
dynamically generated sounds.
- Content origin – weather the artwork presents visual or audio
content to the spectators this content might be dynamically Flyndre relies on software in several of its main parts – 1) for
generated or predefined by the artist. The predefined content controlling the numerous sensors that are capturing environmental
might also be dynamically manipulated. In particular cases parameters, 2) for incorporating the captured parameters into
the audience might also input content to the artwork, for music that is played by the sculpture, 3) for maintaining an
example by sending pictures/music from their phones. Such archive of the music generated in the past, 4) for online
option is only seen in [8] - category adaptive. presentation of the artwork, the artist, the music archive and the
software. The web site is an important part of the whole project
Flyndre is a real example of an interactive art installation. It is a and includes on-the-fly animated Flash application that displays
sculpture located in Inderøy, Norway. It has an interactive sound the current parameters of the environment and the current music
system that has the goal to reflect the nature around the sculpture. played by the sculpture. The archive of the previously played by
To implement this goal the produced sound changes depending on the sculpture music is also accessible through the web site.
parameters like the local time, light level, temperature, water
level, etc. The sound installation of Flyndre is created by the composer,
musician and programmer Øyvind Brandtsegg over an existing
sculpture by the sculptor Nils Aas. At the controlling core of the
sound installation there is a custom version of the software
ImproSculpt3. The first version of the software was written by the
composer in 2001 and was a single CSound ([Link]
script file that was hard to modify, maintain and upgrade.
However, the author discovered that it created a lot of interest
among other composers and music technology enthusiasts. In
order to improve the architecture of the software and publish it as
open source software (OSS) with appropriate licenses, a
multidisciplinary team, including software developers and NTNU
students (as Master thesis work, see [19] and as part of the
“Experts in Team” course, see [9]), was necessary. When
Figure 1. Interactive Installation - Flyndre, Norway published as OSS and available for download the software
On Figure 1 one can see the physical construction of the artwork ImproSculpt attracts more developers and composers to utilize it
which is placed in the natural site2. People can walk around the and further improve and/or upgrade it.
sculpture or sit nearby to watch it and listen to its music. The artist has started the software project that implements the
functionalities of Flyndra. He has been the sole responsible for
development of the modules which implement the composition
logic (e.g. the sampling algorithms or the integration of particular
sounds which are generated based on the environmental
parameters). The generated music reflects the composer’s
aesthetical values and/or the desired [by the artist]
effect/impression on the audience.
During the year the cooperation between the composer and
software experts has given room to software development by
other persons. The software engineers developed the technical
framework for the networking and the sensors systems (i.e. for
capturing parameters by the sensors and for transferring them via
the Internet to the sound processing station). Another group of
software engineers have re-factored the software modular
architecture. During the following years the artist has continued
his solo work on ImproSculpt and the software has evolved and
Figure 2. Environmental parameters in Flyndre changed several times. The artist, however, has consulted and
Figure 2 represents the triggering parameters from the reused whenever possible the modular architecture proposed by
environment that are captured by sensors and which influence the the software engineers and he found it very useful. In addition, the
generation of the music. These parameters are integrated by artist found helpful the publishing of the software as open source
interaction rules into the music which is played by the sculpture in SourceForge4 and the utilization of the Wiki3 and the
all the time. Some of the rules are static (i.e. fixed results are Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) introduced by the software
produces by certain parameters), while other rules are dynamic engineers. The composer has always acted as a project owner
(e.g. “algorithmic composition, generating new sounds in a semi- retaining the control of the whole software.
autonomous fashion” [19]). The ‘content’ in this interactive
3
[Link]
2
This is a screenshot of Flyndre web site [Link] 4
[Link]
3. SOFTWARE ENGINEERING sufficiently precise for developers to use as a specification” are
stronger in multimedia domain than in other domains. Interactive
PRACTICES IN ART PROJECTS installations are often used by a large number and variety of
In this section we present some of the findings of our literature spectators – adults and kids, people with different education and
review. In advance we have synthesized a list of software knowledge, men and women form different nationalities. Thus,
engineering concepts [2, 4] for the purpose of defining the “requirement elicitation should encompass sufficiently large
intersection between software engineering and interactive variety of usage situations.” [1].
installation art which allows us to reflect about new media art. We
have developed this list of important software engineering It is important that both software developers and artists in
concepts by looking at the latest International Conference of interactive installation art are aware of these properties of the
Software Engineering (ICSE 2007) and we have modified it requirements. Requirements might be difficult to capture, vague
supported by our experience and discussions with colleagues. The at the beginning and frequently changeable. Having this in mind
list includes: Requirements; Software Architecture and Design; will allow choosing the most appropriate software development
Testing; Process Models and Project Management; Development methods, designing the most suitable architecture of the product,
Environments and Tools; Maintenance; Open Source Software; good risk assessment and proper planning of budget and schedule.
Quality Attributes; etc.
Our literature review shows that the software developers have to
The following subsections describe those five software be an active side in the requirements definition when working
engineering concepts addressed in the reviewed articles with artists. In many cases artists have clear ideas of what they
considering new media art. want the final effect of the artwork on the audience to be. They
might have also decided on what technology they want to explore.
3.1 Requirements However, they might not be aware of the full potential of this
Software requirements are the real-world goals, needed technology and how it might influence on what the system will
functionality and constraints for the software to be developed. do. They expect suggestions and proposals from the technologists
The process of software requirements engineering includes on what the technology allows. These ideas would not be directly
identifying the stakeholders and their needs and documenting applied, but would provoke/inspire the artist’s creativity and will
these for analysis and implementation. For a software be put together with his/her ideas and goals for the final artifact –
development project to be successful, the software engineers and the artwork.
the client have to agree on the requirements to be implemented.
Requirements definition is one of the most difficult tasks reported 3.2 Software Architecture and Design
by the software developers in the interactive installation projects - The software architecture is a description of the high-level design
"It is the most important part of the process because without a of a system (i.e. the product), its main parts and their relations and
precise understanding of the system requirements it is possible to interactions. Software design is the process of making and
build a well functioning system that does not perform the tasks analyzing such architectures. The software architecture depends
requested by the user" [15]. However, requirements are often on the functionalities which should be provided by the system, on
found difficult to capture. Machine [12] underlines that the technology chosen, on software engineers’ preferred styles,
requirements definition is the hardest part and states that “we find etc. Thus, the software architecture will most probably differ from
the greatest challenges in even identifying what the artist one project to another.
requires”. The author emphasizes that the requirements by the
artist might change repeatedly until he/she is satisfied. Similarly, For several of the interactive installations the software
Marchese reports changes in requirements during the architecture is reported. Marchese [15] describes a simple
implementation of the artwork ‘Trigger’ - "the system design was architecture with 3 components - microcontroller-sensor system,
updated to reflect experiments with different types of sensors” application software, and an interface software between sensors
[15]. Biswas and Singh [1] share their experience from two and the application with "high level interrelationships among
installation projects, stating that often “the emergent system components without specifying the processing details". Boyd et
specifications cannot be defined in sufficiently tangible terms till al. [3] report a pipeline architecture where “the output of a
the very end of the project”, especially because they might be module can provide input to one or more other modules in a
very vague at the beginning. The reason for that might be due to pipeline”. Several standard software (i.e. previously available
the different working style of the artist – more exploratory rather software not developed by the authors) were combined, including
than rationally planned and with explicit goals, as it generally is the software for simulating a swarm and a video interaction
in business domain. server, which is widely used for surveillance tasks. The pipeline is
made dynamically configurable through a graphical interface.
As earlier stated, the installations that we examine are most often
highly interactive. What differs from the common interaction in The software behind the interactive installation ‘Swimming across
software systems is the final goal. In information systems the goal the Pacific’ [7] has a modular architecture. The use of object-
is to increase the efficiency in the correct completion of a oriented software engineering methods is reported in [23]. Machin
concrete task (or set of tasks). On the other hand, "humor and play in [12] describes an especially designed simulator and a specific
are important aspects of the art" [22]. Additionally, often “the language that allows the artist to easily experiment with the
system usage context is entirely absent or it is not well installation design and several supplementary tasks (e.g.
understood” [1]. Hannington and Reed [8] state that the calculation of the overall cost which depends on the changes of
difficulties in “capturing human activities in a manner that is the materials used in the artwork construction and their quantity).
sufficiently informal for non-programmers to understand, yet Similarly, Biswas and Singh [1] have developed a Mobile
Experience Engine (MME) which helps in the simulation of the The evaluation against the final user utilization might be essential
final artwork. Their system contains two parts – a visualizer that for creating the user-system interaction as it is planned and
generates low-fidelity prototype and a code generator that expected by the artist. For example, Steinkamp [22] reports that
generates high-fidelity prototype with optimized implementation "children immediately understand that they are expected to play
for several interaction devices. The authors find that most suitable in the projection". On the other hand, adults were examining and
is to “wisely splitting the application architecture into two parts, analyzing the system instead of actively interacting with it. This
one dealing with interactivity, the other tackling core was not exactly the desired by the artist behavior/effect, but it was
functionality”. Finally, Edmonds et al. state that “In art and noticed only when observing the audience during the exhibition.
technology environments, we need environments for building
While Hannington and Reed [8] affirm that “most multimedia
environments” [6].
process models advocate use of strict evaluation and revision
The observation on the published work on interactive installation within the iterative cycles of development” this might not be
art shows that whenever possible the development teams tend to possible in all cases due to budget or other limitations.
us software that is already available (reuse). This decreases the Furthermore, clear distinction should be done between testing and
overall effort for implementation and the final price of the evaluation, as “testing ensures correct technical operation of the
software. However, in most of the cases the standard components system, but it does not ensure its appropriateness or its
have to be integrated into the full system and custom parts have to effectiveness in delivering the expectations” [1]. Nevertheless, in
be implemented. some cases the testing of certain system parameters might be done
in real-world situation – for example the robustness of the
Although artists often have much more profound technological
innovative face-detection software behind the artwork ‘15
knowledge then expected from clients in software engineering
seconds of fame’ [20] was tested during the exhibition and based
projects, they often would like to have the freedom of
on participants evaluation the authors judged the algorithm as
experimenting with all technological possibilities by themselves
reliable and effective.
even in cases when their programming experience is not enough
of developing the whole software. Adding an extra layer between Summing up, the development team in interactive installation art
the artist and the underlying programming fosters the artwork project should consider evaluating the artwork and especially the
creation without limiting artists’ creativity. interaction as early as possible with final users, as the effect might
not be as expected by the artist. Different users should be
considered - culture, gender, age, etc. Some of the quality
3.3 Testing
attributes, like reliability, robustness, etc. might be tested in real
Software products are usually checked for their correctness during
environment during exhibition.
execution, for satisfying the requirements specifications and on
how well the end-product satisfies the user expectations. The
testing might be done automatically by using other software that 3.4 Process Models and Project Management
executes [pieces of] the system with various parameters and The software development model is a formalization of the
controls the correctness of the outputs. It might be also done activities and the modes in which the software development is
manually by the developers and/or users, which is commonly organized. Generally this is part of the policy which the software
done in small projects. development company has incorporated and is valid for all the
projects within the company. Many interactive installations are
Marchese [15] reports such manual approach for the integration
developed during artists-in-residence programs and the software
testing of the interactive installation ‘Trigger’ - “The developers
development process might be influenced by the hosting
systematically walked through the space triggering all video and
institution practices.
sound sequences”, thus simultaneously testing the hardware (e.g.
sensors) and the software of the artwork. This, together with the Agile method of software development (i.e. Adaptive Software
validation was done on-site when the installation was mounted in Development) was chosen at the beginning of the project
the gallery several days before opening - “Multiple walkthroughs described in [15] and was evaluated as a good choice by the
of the installation by the artist before the opening constituted the software engineers. The developers predicted the possibility of
final acceptance test of the system”. vague requirements which would change frequently. The chosen
method was suitable also because it dealt well with the strict
Strömberg et al. in [23] report the use of heuristic expert
schedulers of both artist and technologists and with budget
evaluation for the technical aspects of the system. Multiple
limitations.
(iterative) evaluations were performed in different phases of the
design and implementation with participants that were considered Biswas and Singh [1] discuss several possible software
potential final users. The evaluation was done by observation, development methods and their advantages and disadvantages for
interviews and open-ended questionnaires and in earlier stages the interactive art projects. For example, they state that “Creative
feedback was used for design improvements. Fells et al. [7] artist’s work processes do not necessarily follow “analyze-model-
evaluated their artwork with the visitors of Siggraph5 2004 design-build” trajectories like engineers. They [artists] iteratively
exhibition, collecting opinions, positive and negative experience, and intuitively generate creative ideas and evolve their design
comments and suggestions. based on their perception and experience”. More suitable from the
traditional software engineering approaches is found to be the
“evolutionary prototyping” in which “artists will generate creative
5
Siggraph is a large annual conference and exhibition on ideas, technologists will receive briefing from artists, build
computer graphics and interactive techniques [Link] prototypes, elicit modifications/corrections and further
requirements from the artists and this cycle will be repeated till Flash as CASE tool – for implementing their programs (e.g. [15]),
the artist is progressively satisfied”. However, this was far from but also for supportive tools, such as for creating the storyboard in
the perfect model, as “system developed by evolutionary [23]. In several cases (e.g. [1, 6, 12]) technologists provide
prototyping may suffer from lack of coherency in its architecture additional software layer for the artists – tools that will give them
due to inadequate planning”. The authors build upon this model the freedom to experiment without limiting their creativity. Such
and enhance it with low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototype tools are found to be well accepted and positively evaluated by
generation. Biswas and Singh also suggest the need of further artists.
investigation of other methods, like user assisted prototyping,
participatory prototyping and prototyping combined with usability
4. PERSISTENT SE PROBLEMS VERSUS
studies.
SE IN ART PROJECTS
While in the previously discussed cases the development of the In the previous section we have reported the software engineering
artwork was rather isolated from the final users, in other projects practices found in the literature from projects involving artists and
different approach has been chosen. Human-centered design has software developers. The goal of this section is to distinguish
been used in [23]. The authors report that the users were not only which practices and problems are specific for art related projects
participating in the final evaluation, but were “essential part of the and which are common in SE. Understanding this is important for
design process from the early stages”. This process is iterative and properly selecting which SE theories to apply in future software
the necessary changes were made according the feedback from intensive art projects. Additionally, it will give indication of
the users. The application functionalities were designed by the which features are unique in art and should be further studied
artists in the form of scenarios and storyboards that were used by from SE point of view. We compare our literature findings with a
the software engineers for deriving an object-oriented study [10] that synthesizes the characteristics of contemporary IS
architecture. development6.
Considering the whole project management several issues should In [10] three inherent and interrelated problems are identified in
be mentioned. The creation of the artwork in interactive the information systems development – 1) diversity, in terms of
installation art is often sponsored by a public entity which does application domains, underlying technology, people involved and
not influence on artist’s creativity. However, the budgets are tight variety of end users, 2) knowledge needed to cope with the
and often relatively small. In many cases the work is created diversity and 3) structure in terms of process methodologies. The
during artists-in-residence programs and it is possible that some authors discovered that the practices for coping with these
members of the team have additional work duties. Commonly, challenges are a) organization and specialization (in three
there is an opening day for the artwork, thus the final deadline for different levels – business, company and personal), b) constant
the full system might not be flexible. Apart from budgeting and verbal communication and negotiation and c) pragmatic
scheduling probably most important issue in the project application of certain development methods and methodical
management is the risk assessment. According to [15] "Any concepts.
component of the system or member of the project could pose a
risk". Artists often explore and incorporate in their interactive art
installations one or more new/emergent technologies (e.g. variety 4.1 Diversity
of sensors, location awareness, mobile and wireless devices, etc.). Technology - The continuously decrease of hardware prices and
Together with mostly limited budget, this leads to the high increase of speed and storage capabilities of computers allows the
probability that the involved technologists will not be well use of computation in many domains with many companies
acquainted with the necessary skills and need time to learn. The strongly relaying on their back-end applications. In addition, new
newest technology might also be problematic in terms of technologies (i.e. the Internet and the Web) allow flexible access
instability, lack of documentation and support materials and to data globally, at high speed and low cost. Companies utilize the
communities. opportunity to present themselves and their products and services
via web sites or access their back-end applications online. The
creation of these web sites often involves artists’/designers’
3.5 Development Environments and Tools participation.
Development environments and tools (e.g. Eclipse) are programs
used by software engineers and programmers as aid for the In the art domain, however, we can see the use of computational
software design and implementation, synonyms are CASE – technology (i.e. software) for larger variety of purposes often
computer aided software engineering, or IPSE – integrated within a single project. Similar to companies, active
process support environment. contemporary artists often create their presentation on the web.
Meanwhile, in interactive installations the software is developed
The development tools used by software engineers in the design for controlling the installation and the interactions of the users
and implementation of the software of interactive installations are with the physical construction. Furthermore, software modules
not discusses in the reviewed articles. Our guess is that standard might be used for generating artistic expression (like the music in
CASE tools were utilized (the ones which the technologists are
most familiar with) without particular advantages or
6
disadvantages for the software development in interactive Further in this section when giving generalized statements about
installation art. Although artists sometimes prefer “access to ISD, although the reference might be sometimes omitted, we
deeper levels of the computer’s programming system” [6] the reference the article [10] Kautz, K., Madsen, S. and Norbjerg,
tools that are suitable for software engineers does not seem to be J. Persistent problems and practices in information systems
proper for them. Interestingly, they use tools like Macromedia development. Information Systems Journal, 17 (3). 217-239.
Flyndre, described in section 2). Such modules are usually created and prototyping. Nevertheless, we should mention again that
by the artist and through artists’ experimentation. The desired artists’ work-style is often experimentation.
outcome often cannot be translated into formal requirements and
On the other hand, a trend we observe is that artists (when they
is continuously evolving.
act as clients) most often have significant interest in being
In addition to the larger functionalities needed in art we should familiar with (i.e. gaining knowledge of) the utilized technology.
mention that artists often influence on the choice of the The reasons for such desire might differ from artist to artist. In
technological solution due to their ideological point of view. some cases this is due to personal interest, which might have
Frequently, artists experiment with emerging technologies in ideological background. In other cases the reason might be
order to provoke audience’s attention and invoke reflection. practical – when the artist uses certain technology in an artwork
Furthermore, in many cases we observe that artists favor Open often he/she wants to continue with it in consecutive projects.
Source ideology and may impose the use of OSS tools and require Consecutive artistic projects, however, might be developed with
licensing of the developed software as OSS. different teams, often due to different means of funding. This
leads to the artist being the connecting branch between versions,
Multidisciplinarity is mentioned in [10] as an emerging
thus the desire of understanding the details.
characteristic of IS. It is due to the increased complexity of the
technology which leads to the need of specialization of the team
members. Sometimes members of the multidisciplinary teams 4.3 Structure
might lack basic IT knowledge and skills which is a major Development methods - Traditional ISD relies on methods and
challenge. Multidisciplinarity is a big issue in new media art too. management techniques that are not widely used in web-based
In different art-related projects experts from many domains have ISD. In the development of web-based systems ad hoc methods
to work together to produce the final artifact – the artwork. In are most often observed. Several studies have reported that
these projects artists might be either members of the team or features like high time pressure, dynamic environment, short
‘clients’ to the SE team or both. In the cases when artists are part development cycle, unstable requirements, etc. which are typical
of the development team the general ISD issues apply. for web-based ISD make many of the traditional ISD
methodologies unfit. In fact, evolutionary or incremental software
End users - The Internet has brought an increase in the variety of process models are recommended as more appropriate to cope
users of IS which often means that designers and developers have with these specific features. We have observed these features in
to create systems for a large and diverse audience without the interactive installation projects reported in the previous
knowing very well the potential users. This characteristic of IS section of this article (see section 3.4). Note that incremental
completely maps to our findings about artistic projects. Although prototyping was also mentioned as a good choice in one of the
this diversity and unfamiliarity with the users creates challenges interactive installation projects.
in terms of identifying, describing and managing requirements it
is not new in IS. When dealing with such issues in art we should Projects characteristics - Similar to web-based ISD projects art
consult previous studies and possible guidelines from the projects are often small, with teams of a couple of people. It is
literature (i.e. SE theories and best practices). shown that in smaller organizations and teams have less need of
structure (i.e. formalization and application of methodologies),
but disciplined development approach is often related to the
4.2 Knowledge quality of the IS. The authors of [10] mentions that the overall
Domain knowledge - Another reported ISD problem is the “thin
low use of methodologies might be indicator of low maturity of
spread of application domain knowledge”. In other words, often
the web-based ISD field. Although this might be also the case
in ISD projects only small number of members in the
with interactive installation art, further study might be necessary
development team understand well the targeted domain. This lack
on how to incorporate the artists’ experimentation needs and work
of domain knowledge often leads to inability to map between the
styles. In any case, project planning and management issues are
targeted domain information and the computer representation. The
commonly difficult but extremely important in ISD, which we
problems related to vague and conflicting requirements often
observe also in artistic projects.
appear as a result of lack of knowledge of the domain area. To
overcome this problem “truly exceptional people, i.e. gurus” that
understand/know well the targeted domain bridge this gap by 5. PECULIARITY OF ART PROJECTS
face-to-face interactions to negotiate and communicate shared In previous sections we present the software development
understanding. Such people might become bottleneck in the practices in the domain of interactive installation art and we
communication, thus in ISD projects it is important to plan and compare this practices with the persistent problems in IS
budget time and resources for learning about the application development. We see that many of the characteristics and
domain. This is one of the things that we think differs drastically problems of modern software development are similar to the ones
in art-related projects. Artists rely on being different from one we observe in art projects. Based on the comparison and on our
another and artworks are rarely very similar. Thus, even if one experience we identify several characteristics which are peculiar
knows/learns a lot about art theories and is familiar with for artistic projects:
contemporary art practices it still might be impossible to
1) Experimentation as a working style of artists: This is a major
overcome problems with vague requirements. In any case, the
challenge and further research is needed to fully understand
importance of open and intensive communication to reach shared
how to support such experimentation without limiting artists’
understanding between software developers and artists is
creativity. Constant verbal communication and negotiation is
underlined by practitioners in interactive installation art. Partially,
crucial and prototyping might be very helpful. The acquisition
misunderstandings might be overcome with the help of simulation
 of domain knowledge and learning about the art domain by and problems in information systems development, pointing to the
software engineers might not resolve difficulties of vague and similarities. We also discuss the particularities of art projects
changing requirements in art projects, due to the which might need further study from software engineering
experimenting nature of artists working styles. On the other perspective. This work will give a roadmap to researchers and
hand, we observe that artists are interested in gaining software practitioners interested in the multidisciplinary domain where
engineering knowledge, which, in our opinion, is not typical software intensive art is developed.
for typical clients in ISD.
In principle, this work should be relevant to artists who want to
2) Entertainment or reflection as a final goal: One of the main communicate with software engineers and to software engineers
differences we observe in art related projects is the who want to work with artists.
application aim/goal. While in other domains such as
The difficulty of systematic literature review of software
business, commonly the goal is to increase task efficiency, in
engineering issues in art domain: Performing an multidisciplinary
art the goal is to entertain and to raise awareness in the
systematic literature review poses a set of challenges. One of
audience about contemporary phenomenon and its
them is to find the relevant publication sources (journal and
implications for the future of the society. This characteristic
conferences). There are multidisciplinary domains (e.g. e-learning
leads often to the production of non-critical applications. Due
or bioinformatics) with well established traditions and
to this, multidisciplinary projects might be very good for
journal/conferences. We have found out that in the art domain
educational purposes (i.e. Flyndre or Experts in team course
there are few specialized publications on art and technology. The
in NTNU, described in section 2, involving software
bigger problem, however, is that the existing ones (e.g. MIT
engineering students and artists/art students). Unexpected
Leonardo7 or Convergence8) most often have a very broad focus
(even incorrect) functionalities of the developed programs
and address mainly the artistic perspective, so software
might be considered by the artists as non-negative, interesting
engineering issues are either not discussed or addressed
and inspiring effects.
superficially. Another option is to search SE publications for art-
3) Ideological influence on the choice of technology. Artists’ related articles. The defining of useful keywords to search for
preference for utilization of [emerging] technologies, like relevant articles proved to be a difficult task. The keyword ‘art’ is
mobile devices, surveillance cameras, sensors, etc. is often problematic to use as part of a search in the computer science
due to ideological motivation - they are driven by their desire world as the combination “state of the art” is used in almost all
to provoke reflection in the audience. The technological papers.
choice influences on the use of software technology too. This
The importance of software engineering concepts which are not
differs from other domains, where the choice of software
reported in relation to interactive installation art: In the
technology is based on the workflow processes that the new
software has to support and the needs to integrate new beginning of section 3 we have listed a number of software
engineering concepts that are important in SE. While performing
systems with previous available systems. Additionally, we
our literature review we tried to cover all of them. Nevertheless
observe ideological choice even of the software technology:
some concepts, like maintenance or quality attributes of the
for example artists use open source software for ideological
software are not mentioned in any of the reviewed articles. We
reasons. What typically happens is that when they try it the
ask if it depends from the fact that they are not important in
user interface is unfamiliar and difficult and some features
they are used to and they need are missing. Thus, they switch interactive installation art or there is some other reason why they
are omitted in the published articles. Our experience with
back to proprietary applications, like Final Cut
industrial SE makes us hypothesize that they should be important.
Pro/Acid/Photoshop. A challenge for SE is to keep the artists’
Artists often continue work on their interactive installations; they
interest in participating in open software development, as
evolve and are exhibited in consecutive occasions. Then why
their artistic and innovative input of ideas for new
software maintenance is not discussed? Our assumption is that
functionalities and solutions to problems might prove to be
this might be related to limited budgets of projects in interactive
very valuable.
art installations.
In addition, special attention should be paid on artists’ tendency
Our current and future work is to extend the systematic literature
to utilize wide variety, mostly emerging technologies. In
review. It has a broad focus and our goal is to cover different
interactive installation art projects we often observe the use of
artistic disciplines unveiling the importance of the software
software to support large variety of functionalities (e.g. control of
sensors, interaction, content generation, web presentation, etc.). engineering perspective. In addition, we intend to proceed with
case studies on the projects we are involved in.
The software is often developed through a single project by a
small team with generally tight budget and schedules. This Finally, we think it is essential to inform members of both
implies to the need of cautious choice of software development communities (software engineering and art) of the important
methodology and project management, including careful risk concepts of the other field. This will raise awareness, interest and
assessment. multidisciplinary discussions.

6. CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSION AND 7

Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts,
FUTURE WORK Science and Technology [Link]
In this paper we present the software engineering practices in 8
projects for creating software intensive art. We compare the Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New
reported in the literature issues with the common characteristics Media Technologies [Link]/convergence
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