Improvisation Methodologies in Creative Technologies

This project focuses on collaborations between artists and communities that involve creative technologies. It explores the ways in which improvisatory methodologies may enable artists to negotiate some of the more complex aspects of human/technology interaction, and may help them to build ethical collaborations with community participants. Specifically, it argues that improvisation methodologies could offer important possibilities to practitioners negotiating the ethics and practical issues they face in technology-based arts projects including access, media literacy, differing abilities, responsibility, and diversity of expression; as well as having the potential to help with more general issues facing all community-based practitioners, such as ethically negotiating uneven power relations between participants and facilitators, and the delicate balancing of different artistic and social goals.

The research will observe and document ongoing collaborative, creative technology work taking place in the Interactive Media and Performance Labs at University of Regina, and aims to provide information and strategies that will support the development of other community-based projects.

Researchers: Rebecca Caines, and Charity Marsh, University of Regina; in collaboration with Common Weal Community Arts, Holophon Audio Arts, IMP Labs.

Outcomes

“Profile of the Interactive Media and Performance (IMP) Labs: An Interview with Dr. Charity Marsh“, Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation Vol 10 No 1 (2014).