Extending Software Engineering Collaboration towards the Intersection of Software and Art

Abstract

The intersection between Software Engineering and Art is an interesting area which is growing with an increasing number of artists using software technology in their artwork. As a result, software developed by artists and for artists is emerging as new category of software and software dependent art projects are growing in numbers, drawing the attention of software developers and artists. Often in these projects, software engineers have to work together with artists in order to support them with software engineering methods, tools, and technology. But the collaboration between artists and software engineers is not always smooth due to the fact that they come from two very different disciplines. Hence a knowledge base at the intersection of software engineering and art is beneficial to both artists and software engineers. From the software engineering point of view, the scope of software engineering can be extended by considering software dependent artwork as a system. In this way, software engineering issues can be identified in the development, maintenance and upgrading of software dependent artwork. In this thesis, we will conceptualise the intersection of software engineering and art, and contribute to the knowledge base at the intersection. In this research we have identified the following research questions to investigate the intersection of software and art:

RQ1. What is the relationship between art and software and how can we conceptualise it?

RQ2. How can we characterise the development process of software dependent artwork and projects in terms of software development, maintenance, upgrade and usability of the artwork?

RQ3. How can we increase collaboration between artists and software engineers and improve the field of computing by borrowing concepts from the arts?

These queries were dealt with in two systematic reviews and a case study. The results of the queries were obtained by qualitative analysis of information and concepts gathered from literature reviews and case studies where the data analysis is predominantly hermeneutics and phenomenological. The main contributions of the research work are:

C1. Identification of the research issues at the intersection of software and art.

C2. Conceptual framework of different entities and themes at the intersection of software and art

C3. Identification of the issues that contribute to the success or failure of a software dependent art project and the features that facilitates collaboration between artists and technologists

C4. Proposals on how we can bridge software engineering and art through collaborations and improve computing discipline by borrowing concepts and ideas from art.

These contributions add to the knowledge base at the intersection of software engineering and art. The knowledge base identifies how software engineering can be extended and enriched by collaborations with art. At the same time, the knowledge base can bridge the gap between the stakeholders involved in the software and art and bring positive results and experiences for everyone involved.