Towards Good Software Engineering Practices in Interactive Installation Art

Software engineering products and processes are important in the production of new media art as new media artworks heavily depends on software. We have run a literature review and analyzed papers published in computer science journals and conferences to establish a knowledge base of the multidisciplinary field of software engineering and art with focus on interactive installation art. In addition we have observed several projects of new media art production. This paper presents the findings of our review of interactive art installation. It organizes the theme according to five concepts which are: requirements, architecture, validation, process, and tools. Furthermore, we compare our findings with the general practices in contemporary software development. We discuss which issues are peculiar for software intensive art projects and need further software engineering research: 1) Experimentation as a working style of artists; 2) Entertainment or reflection as a final goal; 3) Ideological influence on the choice of technology. This information should help researchers who work at the intersection between software engineering and the new media art as it provides a map of the published literature and outlines which research issues are peculiar of this multidisciplinary field.