How it started
Promise me being played at Futures Without (BAK, July 2019), the final exhibition for the Master of Fine Arts of the HKU.
I finished my master degree in July 2019 and …
… in September, after the holidays, I attended dis-seminar, an exposium on alternative forms of disseminating artistic research, organised by the Utrecht-based platform Kunst Onderzoek. In his talk, artist-researcher Micha Hamel presented a project which investigate the integration of games and gamification in classical music concerts, so that audiences may engage themselves in meaningful modes of listening. The talk attracted my attention: I found the idea very interesting and I saw analogies with my own research, therefore I decided to contact some of the people involved to see if there was space for a collaboration. First I met Rens Kortmann, from the Policy Analysis group in the Department of Multi-Actor Systems in TU Delft, and then I had a few informal meetings with the researchers at TU Delft, for preliminary discussions. In December, I held a performance / game session in TU Delft, and after a thorough discussion with Rens and Annebeth Erdbrink, who is doing her PhD on persuasive game design, we decided to start a collaboration. For Annebeth, what is interesting is the fact the game that I developed, “Promise Me”, is not digital, it involves making promises, and it has a clear cut ethical dimension. For me, what is interesting is the possibility to interact with a large research group, and the possibility to do artistic research within a scientific environment.
At the moment there is no institution behind me and I do not have any fundings. This means that I am working on the project at my own expenses, but it means also that I am totally free to drive the research where it is most interesting for me. The other researchers are already part of a larger research setting, hence they have already defined research lines. We still don’t know how this will practically impact the collaboration, but I really appreciated the openness of the TU Delft group, and the fact that they are willing to support me as much as they can.
What kind of research project is this? I believe it is a true experiment: it is a social psychology experiment but it is also an experiment in artistic research. I hope to be able to use the initial results of the research to apply for a PhD in Art.