Living laboratories for interactive art

This paper explores the idea of the exhibition as a living laboratory in the making and curating of interactive art. It suggests that museums can act as living laboratories where curators, artists and audiences collaborate in real-world settings. Such laboratories are shown to be essential for the study of the audience experience of interactive art, a key part of understanding interactivity as a medium. The paper describes Betaₛpace: an experimental public exhibition venue and research environment for interactive art. It places this initiative within a historical continuum of transversal cultural display and the use of the museum as laboratory. It identifies an emerging phenomenon of hybrid research, production and exhibition spaces, and argues that such initiatives work to overcome the continued distinctions, within traditional cultural institutions, between art, science and technology, object and experience, creation and consumption.