A Transdisciplinary Framework to Analyze Interactive and Participatory Experiences in Public Settings

This dissertation presents a transdisciplinary framework to analyze interactive and participatory experiences in public settings. This type of experience is constructed through the use of different media and technological devices and installed in spaces designed for collective or communal use. This work draws on the fields of Public Interactives and Art as Social Practice, and uses methods of field research, design research, creative practice, and reflective practice to create a framework of analysis. Four different types of cultural institutions and two specific interactive or participatory experiences of each are explored in four case studies. The framework of analysis addresses research questions concerning Space, Publics, and Experience. Specifically, the analyses presented explore the entangled infrastructures of each institution and how they influence the interactive experience. Each chapter also examines how each of the studied institutions form and communicate their preferred publics, and how the experiences offered through interactive installations are used to engage visitors as the preferred publics of the institution. To analyze matters of experience, the framework presents the concept of the mediated experience, as the experience that is on offer in a space as a visitor encounters it, and of scripting, as the linear timeline or storyboard of each moment of the experience as it is offered to participants. The research findings of this transdisciplinary study provide a new perspective to the analysis of interactive and participatory experiences in public settings, particularly in cultural institutions. The research also contributes insights to designers and creative practitioners of interactive and participatory experiences in public settings, as it offers new layers of understanding towards a more intentional practice.