At the Frontiers of Art and IoT: the IoTgo Toolkit as a Probe for Artists

Abstract

Smart things, such as smart watches and smart-door bells, are becoming part of our daily life. Artists are usually inexperienced of how smart things are designed. Experiencing the design of smart things can trigger their imagination and help them produce novel artwork. This paper reports on workshops with five artists, without prior experience of smart-thing design. At the core of the workshops were the ideation tools of IoTgo, which is a smart-thing design toolkit. The first workshop served to use and co-create parts of the ideation tools of IoTgo for and with artists. The second workshop enabled artists to use the tools so as to ideate novel smart-artwork things, and engage again in the evolution of IoTgo. Results of the workshops are reflected over, and useful lessons are distilled in relation to design toolkits for artists.