user_mode = emotion + intuition in art + design - a symposium

user_mode is major collaboration between Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and Tate Modern, supported by Intel Corporation, with the Science Museum.

user_mode examined one of the key concerns for many creative practitioners: how to engage the emotions of the audience or user.
Artists, designers and critics frequently refer to 'emotional engagement' but what is meant by this? Is it immersion, rapture, agency, reflection? This question is crucial to interactive art and design practice where the user's response is sensitive to context and can influence not only the form and content of the work but also, in some cases, the future direction of technological development.

Ubiquitous computing and mobile technologies are so embedded in our environment they play a significant role in the forming and reforming of personal identity and the flux of social relations. We are on the cusp of a wireless revolution that promises increased access to communications networks and significant changes to how we work, play, learn and live our lives. Attention is moving away from the machines themselves to the value of the experience they can offer. How do they enable us to feel and behave? How can they enhance that intangible thing, our humanity?

user_mode was a constellation of international artists, designers, technologists and theorists whose work addresses these issues from a range of practices. There will be presentations of art installations, AI, architecture, electronic music, networked role playing games, graphic communication, interaction design, net art, performance, smart textiles and wearable technologies.

The symposium was a framework for discussion and exchange through which different disciplines can offer their perspective on user engagement and benefit from each other's insights. The symposium asked if the participatory nature of interactive art and design offers a more profound experience than traditional forms of art and design.

user_mode was a follow up to the two-day international conference The Allure of the Digital held at Tate Britain in 1999.

Central Saint Martins' role is to challenge conventional wisdom and promote new insight through inspired creative practice and this event is a significant opportunity to drive forward the growing interest amongst staff, students and researchers in humanising technologies. Tate Modern has a wide-ranging programme of public events which facilitate, foster and make public multi-disciplinary debates on modern and contemporary visual art and culture. user_mode is part of the dynamic 'Culture and Technology' strand of programming, which seeks to examine the impact of new technologies on cultural practice.

The symposium was the first of its kind, at Tate Modern to be structured around an international call for papers. The huge number of proposals received and the inspirational quality of the work demonstrates the spread of the practice and the currency of the topic. The symposium reflects the breadth and concerns of the submissions. On the first day it explored the poetics, techniques and purpose of engaging the user's emotions. The second day went on to discuss subjectivity, identity and social ecologies.

The event culminated at the Science Museum where the audience was able to view the interactive art installations and the RemoteHome, a piece specially commissioned for the symposium.