Every new technology is an inspiration for artists. They run with it, push its limits and focus on exploring experiences that the new medium facilitates. For over 50 years now technology artists have experimented with different presence designs. Using radio and television, video, audio and digital media in many ways, artists have explored how human beings can perform presence in different media configurations. Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Char Davies, David Rokeby, Shu Lea Cheang, Lisa Autogena, just to name a few, have altered the way in which people experience the merging realities around them.
Artists are experts in creating experiences for others offering perception and reflection in unanticipated ways and affect the aesthetic experience that is part of everyday life (Dewey 1934). Artistic research, including the making of work and methodologies for research, offers radical realism, non-conceptualism and contingency (Schwab & Borgdorff 2014). Distinct from art history, and distinct form art practice, artistic research aims to contribute to larger research questions (Biggs & Karlsson 2011, Borgdorff 2012, Zijlmans 2013). Presence design in the era of ubiquitous computing and pervasive media is definitely such a question.
Artistic research
Presence research uses many methodologies from the medical and natural sciences as well as methodologies from the social and design sciences. Artists, who have challenged the imagination of presence design with elaborate use of technology for several decades now, make specific contributions to presence research.
