Interactive and Digital Enrichment for Flying Foxes

This research investigates the nature of interactive and digital art for nonhuman end-users, focusing on enrichment as a lens for positive nonhuman artwork interactions. I place this within a context of interactive art as enrichment for wild flying foxes in rehabilitation care undergoing rewilding. The project speculates on a multispecies future for Anthropocenic arts in which the needs of other species are ethically considered. I contend that through knowledges from the field of animal enrichment design and animal care, we are better able to create artwork artefacts that cultivate enrichment. I use a Creative Practice Research approach that is informed by frameworks and processes from animal enrichment design, proposing the ‘S.P.I.D.E.R. CPR’ approach. I use methods of ‘giving’ flying foxes artefacts in order to reflect on engagements between individual animals, humans, and artworks. This results in two main interactive art projects, including ‘The Quantum Enrichment Entanglers’ touchable and digitally-enabled sculptures. These sculptures send enrichment audio to each other based on when and how flying foxes are interacting with them. I find that digital interactive art, in particular, can expand enrichment opportunities by paying attention to levels of sensory exploration and interspecies relationships between end-users. This is important for the future of the technology-based arts, as current research in the field sees it attempting to move beyond human-centrism in design, aesthetic, and user-ship, and towards more-than-human interactions and considerations.

Alinta Krauth

‘The Quantum Enrichment Entanglers’ (2021-), Alinta Krauth. Image courtesy of the researcher.

EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS

DIGITREK21 – HOTA Digital Art Panel Discussion @ HOTA Lakeside Room

Fri., MAY 28 2021 | About the event

Location | HOTA, Home of the Arts Lakeside Room, Surfers Paradise.

POSTSCRIPT | SPECTRAVISION | SPECTRA 2022

Episode 6: Friday, 6 May, 2022, 10am – 5pm | About the event

Location | Online.

Sites of Connection

13 Aug- 30 October 2021 | About the event

Location | USC Art Gallery

Digital Technologies in Nature

2021 | About the event

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Created by and part of PhD by Alinta Krauth

Principal Supervisor – Prof Donna Hancox, Associate Supervisor A/Prof Jen Seevinck