SArt: Towards Innovation at the Intersection of Software Engineering and Art 9
4 Research Issues Found in the Literature
In this section we present some of the research work/papers we have reviewed in our
first phase of literature review and found relevant according to the selection criteria
described in section 3. The issues presented here are neither complete nor exhaustive;
rather it is aimed to make a further contribution to the review result by grouping
the articles according to the issues that have discussed (Oates, 2006b). As certain
papers discuss more than one of the issues they are referenced more than once. This
is a preliminary trial to create some classification/taxonomy of the research in the
field. We also shortly propose hints for further software engineering research in each
category.
4.1 Software Development Issues
- requirements/needs for software and software functionality within the artist
community. The artist Jen Grey (2002) discusses her experimentation with an alternative
input mode (3D) – Surface Drawing © by Steven Schkolne – that she
evaluates as very good for producing her artworks. The author have used the
software in "a unique way to draw live models, a purpose for which it was not intended".
Though it is not discussed by the author, this article points us the need
for further research on the artists needs for software functionality of the generalpurpose
software. Such research might include studies on how the commercial
and OSS available software match the artists needs. Meanwhile, a separate study
might be needed on how to best discover the software requirements in projects
that involve software development for art systems, like art installations reported
by Marchese (2006) and the projects we described in section 2.
- evaluation in art projects. Marchese (2006) describes the software developer’s
perspective on the creation of an interactive art installation. The author reports
that the understanding of the system requirements is “the most important part of
the process”. This is consistent with the software engineering body of knowledge.
Software systems are developed according to customer requirements (in art as in
other fields). The customer (the artist in this domain) will differ from the user of
the product. The artist might want certain interactions to be triggered when a
spectator approaches the artwork. For creating the software in the proper way,
however, it is needed to understand how the artwork as a whole will be perceived
by the spectator and a special attention should be paid on the fact that user’s
evaluation or acceptance testing might appear only after the product is released
(i.e. the artwork is in the museum and the exhibition is opened).
- software tools. Edmonds, Turner and Candy (2004) have presented their approach
to building interactive systems. Based on the collaborative work between
artists and computer scientists (the authors themselves) they report that there is a
need (for the artists) for “a bridge between the use of an environment that requires
programming knowledge and the ‘closed’ application, which does not provide
sufficient flexibility”. They suggest that further research is needed in this direction.
An example of bridging such a gap is shown by Machin (2002) where a