Multispecies Interactive Art with Domesticated Dogs

This research investigates the nature of interactive and digital art for multispecies end-users, focusing on enrichment and play as a lens for positive nonhuman artwork interactions. I place this within a context of interactive art as enrichment for companion dogs and humans. 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 bonding through play in order to reflect on engagements between individual animals, humans, and artworks. This results in two main interactive art projects, including ‘IntraFacing’, an interactive game that decodes a dog’s body position through accelerometer and uses this information to give tasks to the human player, and ‘The Brush’s Brushes’, an interactive dog brush that gives audio praise when used. From this I find that the artist can contribute to enrichment design through approaching animals as individuals, and that the artist must consider issues such as ethics and care in order to approach other species appropriately. 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

Multispecies Interactive Art for Dogs and Humans (2021-), Alinta Krauth. Image courtesy of the researcher.

EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS

ACI’2020: Seventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction

November 10 – 12, 2020 | About the event

Location | Milton Keynes United Kingdom

PUBLICATIONS

Making-with: Nonhuman Animal Inclusivity in an Electronic Literature Practice

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Created by and part of PhD by Alinta Krauth

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