skip to main content
research-article

The Ethical Implications of HCI's Turn to the Cultural

Published: 24 August 2015 Publication History

Abstract

We explore the ethical implications of HCI's turn to the ‘cultural’. This is motivated by an awareness of how cultural applications, in our case interactive performances, raise ethical issues that may challenge established research ethics processes. We review research ethics, HCI's engagement with ethics and the ethics of theatrical performance. Following an approach grounded in Responsible Research Innovation, we present the findings from a workshop in which artists, curators, commissioners, and researchers explored ethical challenges revealed by four case studies. We identify six ethical challenges for HCI's engagement with cultural applications: transgression, boundaries, consent, withdrawal, data, and integrity. We discuss two broader implications of these: managing tensions between multiple overlapping ethical frames; and the importance of managing ethical challenges during and after an experience as well as beforehand. Finally, we discuss how our findings extend previous discussions of Value Sensitive Design in HCI.

Supplementary Material

JPG File (a24-benford.jpg)
MP4 File (a24-benford.mp4)

References

[1]
ACM. 2013. ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. (Verified August 2013). Retrieved from http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics 2013, ACM.
[2]
Bob Anderson and Marina Jirotka (forthcoming) Ethical Praxis in e-Research in P. Halfpenny and R. Procter (forthcoming) Innovations in Digital Methodologies. Sage
[3]
Stuart Anderson, Nichola Bredeche, A. E. Eiben, George Kampis, and Maarten van Steen. 2013. Herding Black Sheep Adaptive Collective Systems, on-line book publication available from http://focas.eu/adaptive-collective-systems/ (Verified July 2014).
[4]
George Annas and Michael Grodin. 1995. The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation. Oxford University Press; New Ed edition.
[5]
Zygmun Bauman. 2008. The Art of Life. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
[6]
Howard S. Becker. 1982. Art Worlds. University of California Press, Cambridge, UK.
[7]
Steve Benford, Andy Crabtree, Stuart Reeves, Jennifer Sheridan, Alan Dix, Martin Flintham, and Adam Drozd. 2006. The frame of the game: Blurring the boundary between fiction and reality in mobile experiences. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 427--436.
[8]
Steve Benford and Gabriella Giannachi. 2011. Performing Mixed Reality. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
[9]
Steve Benford, Chris Greenhalgh, Andy Crabtree, Martin Flintham, Brendan Walker, Joe Marshall, Boriana Koleva, Stefan Rennick Egglestone, Gabriella Giannachi, Matt Adams, Nick Tandavanitj, and Ju Row Farr. 2013. Performance-led research in the wild. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 20, 3, Article 14 (July 2013), 22 pages.
[10]
Steve Benford, Chris Greenhalgh, Gabriella Giannachi, Brendan Walker, Joe Marshall, and Tom Rodden. 2012. Uncomfortable interactions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12), May 2012, ACM, Austin, Texas.
[11]
Blast Theory. 2013. Act Otherwise, Workshop Webpage and Agenda. Retrieved from http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/event_actotherwise2013.html.
[12]
Mark Blythe, Kees Overbeeke, Andrew Monk, and Peter Wright. 2004. Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
[13]
Alan Borning and Michael Muller. 2012. Next steps for value sensitive design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12). ACM Press, 1125--1134.
[14]
Mary Boulton and Michael Parker. 2006. Informed consent in a changing environment. Social Science & Medicine 65, 11, 2187--2198.
[15]
Paul Cairns and Harold Thimbleby. 2003. The diversity and ethics of HCI. Computer and Information Science 1, 212 (2003), 1--19.
[16]
Gilbert Cockton. 2004. Value-centred HCI. In Proceedings of the Third Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Tampere, Finland.
[17]
Arthur Danto. 1964. The Artworld. American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting. Vol. 61, 571--584.
[18]
Norman Denzin. 1997. Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century. London: Sage.
[19]
George Dickie. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.
[20]
Carl DiSalvo, Kirsten Boehner, Nicholas Knouf, and Phoebe Sengers. 2009. Nourishing the ground for sustainable HCI: Considerations from ecologically engaged art. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’09). ACM, 385--394.
[21]
Rosalind Edwards and Melanie Mauthner. 2002. Ethics and feminist research: Theory and practice. In M. Mauthner, M. Birch, J. Jessop, and T. Miller (Eds.), Ethics in qualitative research. London: Sage.
[22]
Pelle Ehn. 1990. Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, USA.
[23]
David England and Jill Fantauzzacoffin. 2013. Digital Arts: Featured Community, CHI 2013 website, ACM. Retrieved from http://chi2013.acm.org/communities/digital-arts/.
[24]
Elizabeth Evans, Martin Flintham, and Sarah Martingdale. 2014. The malthusian paradox: Performance in an alternate reality game. Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 18 (2014), 1567--1582.
[25]
Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2005. Values at play: Design tradeoffs in socially-oriented game design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’05). ACM Press (2005), 751--760.
[26]
Lyndsay French. 2002. ‘Exhibiting Terror’, in Bradley, Mark and Petro, Patrice (Eds.), Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights, Rutgers University Press, London, pp. 131--56.
[27]
Batya Friedman and Peter H. Kahn. 2003. Human values, ethics, and design. In J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (Eds.), The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, L. Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, USA, 1177--1201.
[28]
William W. Gaver, Jake Beaver, and Steve Benford. 2003. Ambiguity as a resource for design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’03). ACM, 233--240.
[29]
Jane Goodall. 2005. An order of pure decision: Un-natural selection in the work of Stelarc and Orlan. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Theory, Culture & Society: Body Modification. SAGE Publications Ltd, London, pp. 149--171.
[30]
Barbara Grimpe, Mark Hartswood, and Marina Jirotka. 2014. Towards a closer dialogue between policy and practice: Responsible design in HCI. Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.
[31]
David H. Guston. 2014. Understanding ‘anticipatory governance’. Social Studies of Science 44, 2 (2014), 218--242.
[32]
Mark Hartswood and Marina Jirotka. 2013. Towards ethical governance of social machines.
[33]
Janet Jacobs. 2008. Gender and collective memory: Women and representation at Auschwitz. Memory Studies 1, 2, 211--25.
[34]
Rachel Jacobs, Steve Benford, Mark Selby, Mike Golembewski, Dominic Price, and Gabriella Giannachi. 2013. A conversation between trees: What data feels like in the forest. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 129--138.
[35]
James Jones. 1993. Bad Blood: Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment - A Tragedy of Race and Medicine. The Free Press, NY.
[36]
Julie Kent, Emma Williamson, Trudi Goodenough, and Richard Ashcroft. 2002. Social science gets the ethics treatment: Research governance and ethical review. Sociological Research Online, 7(4) www.socresonline.org.uk/7/4/williamson.html.
[37]
John Knight. 2006. “Ethics and HCI.” Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction (2006), 199.
[38]
Cory Knobel and Geoffrey Bowker. 2011. Values in design. Communications of the ACM 54, 7 (2011), 26--28.
[39]
Boriana Koleva, Ian Taylor, Steve Benford, Mike Fraser, Chris Greenhalgh, Holger Schnadelbach, Dirk vom Lehn, Christian Heath, Ju Row-Farr, and Matt Adams. 2001. Orchestrating a mixed reality performance. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’01). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 38--45.
[40]
Emmanuel Lévinas. 1985. Ethics and infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA.
[41]
Liberty. 2013. The value of our digital identity. Global Policy Series, available from http://www.libertyglobal.com/PDF/public-policy/The-Value-of-Our-Digital-Identity.pdf (verified July 22nd 2014).
[42]
Eva Luger, Stuart Moran, and Tom Rodden. 2013. Consent for all: Revealing the hidden complexity of terms and conditions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2687--2696.
[43]
Eva Luger and Tom Rodden. 2013. An informed view on consent for UbiComp. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 529--538.
[44]
Joe Marshall, Duncan Rowland, Stefan Egglestone, Steve Benford, Brendan Walker, and Derek McAuley. 2011. Breath control of amusement rides. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11). April 2011, ACM.
[45]
John McCarthy and Pete Wright. 2004. Technology as Experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
[46]
Jane McGonigal. 2011. Reality is Broken. Penguin Press, NY, USA.
[47]
Donald McMillan, Alistair Morrison, and Matthew Chalmers. 2013. Categorised ethical guidelines for large scale mobile HCI. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.
[48]
Anne Morrison, Steve Viller, and Peta Mitchell. 2011. Building sensitising terms to understand free-play in open-ended interactive art environments. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2335--2344.
[49]
Enid Mumford. 1995. Effective Systems Design and Requirements Analysis: The ETHICS Method. Macmillan, London, UK.
[50]
Elizabeth Murphy and Robert Dingwall. 2001. The Ethics of Ethnography. In P. Atkinson, et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Ethnography, 339--351, Sage, London, UK.
[51]
Kelly Oliver. 2001. Witnessing Beyond Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
[52]
Leysia Palen and Paul Dourish. 2003. Unpacking “privacy” for a networked world. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’03). 129--136.
[53]
Edward L. Pattullo. 1982. Modesty is the best policy: The federal role in social research. In T. Beauchamp, R. Faden, R. J. Wallace, and Walters (Eds.), Ethical Issues in Social Science Research. (pp. 373--389). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
[54]
Stuart Reeves. 2011. Designing Interfaces in Public Settings. Springer, London, UK.
[55]
Stuart Reeves, Sarah Martingdale, Paul Tennent, Steve Benford, Joe Marshall, and Brendan Walker. “Telling Stories Using Biodata in Promotional Filmmaking”, submitted to ACM Transactions on CHI (currently accepted subject to minor revisions).
[56]
Nicholas Ridout. 2009. Theatre and Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills.
[57]
F. Rifkin. 2010. The Ethics of Participatory Theatre in Higher Education. Retrieved from http://78.158.56.101/archive/palatine/files/ethics.pdf, verified 21/6/2013.
[58]
Holger Schnädelbach, Stefan R. Egglestone, Stuart Reeves, Steve Benford, Brendan Walker, and Michael Wright. 2008. Performing thrill: Designing telemetry systems and spectator interfaces for amusement rides. In Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’08). ACM, Florence, Italy, 1167--1176.
[59]
Abigail Sellen, Yvonne Rogers, Richard Harper, and Tom Rodden. 2009. Reflecting human values in a digital age. Communications of the ACM 52, 3 (March 2009), 58--66.
[60]
Pheobe Sengers and William W. Gaver. 2006. Staying open to interpretation: Engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation. In Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’06). ACM, 99--108.
[61]
Nigel Shadbolt, Kenton O'Hara, Tim Berners-Lee, Nicholas Gibbins, Hugh Glaser, Wendy Hall, and Monica C. Schraefel. 2012. Linked open government data: Lessons from Data.gov.uk. IEEE Intelligent Systems 27, 3 (Spring Issue), 16--24.
[62]
Jennifer Sheridan, Nick Bryan-Kinns, and Alice Bayliss. 2007. Encouraging witting participation and performance in digital live art. In Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: HCI…but not as we know it - Volume 1 (BCS-HCI’07), Vol. 1. British Computer Society, Swindon, UK, 13--23.
[63]
Jack Stilgoe, Richard Owen, and Phil Macnaghten. 2013. Developing a framework for responsible innovation. Research Policy 42, 9 (November 2013), 1568--1580.
[64]
Robyn Taylor, Guy Schofield, John Shearer, Jayne Wallace, Peter Wright, Pierre Boulanger, and Patrick Olivier. 2011. Designing from within: Humanaquarium. In Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1855--1864.
[65]
Peter Tolmie, Steve Benford, Martin Flintham, Pat Brundell, Matt Adams, Nick Tandavantij, Ju Row Far, and Gabriella Giannachi. 2012. “Act natural”: Instructions, compliance and accountability in ambulatory experiences. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1519--1528.
[66]
Rene Von Schomberg. 2013. A vision of Responsible Research and Innovation. In Responsible Innovation: Managing the Responsible Emergence of Science and Innovation in Society, R. Owen, J. Bessant, and M. Heintz (Eds.), Wiley, Hoboken, 51--74.
[67]
Elvi Whittaker. 2005. Adjudicating entitlements: The emerging discourses of research ethics boards. Health, 9, 4, 513--535.
[68]
Norbert Wiener. 1954. The Human Use of Human Beings. Da Capo Press, Boston, USA.
[69]
John Willett. 1964. Brecht on Theatre. Methuen, London.
[70]
Philip G. Zimbardo. 1973. On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research with special reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Cognition 2, 2, 243--256.
[71]
EPSRC. 2014. Framework for Responsible Innovation - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Retrieved September 10 from http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/research/framework/.
[72]
European Commission. 2011. Commission's Recommendation to the Member States on Responsible Research and Innovation. European Commission. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/planned_ia/docs/2010_rtd_012_responsible_research_innovation_en.pdf.
[73]
Technology Strategy Board (2012). Responsible Innovation Framework for Commercialisation of Research Findings. For Use 1681 in Synthetic Biology Feasibility Studies Competition 2012: Advancing the Industrial Application of 1682 Synthetic Biology. Available online at (verified August 10th 2015): http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130221185318/www.innovateuk.org/_assets/responsible_innovation.pdf.
[74]
Markus Montola, Annika Waern, Jussi Kuittinen, and Jakko Stenros. 2006. Deliverable D5.5 Gaming, http://www.pervasive-gaming.org/Deliverables/D5.5-Ethics.pdf Ethics of Pervasive.
[75]
Fabian Muniesa and Marc Lenglet. 2013. Responsible Innovation in Finance: Directions and implications. In Responsible Innovation, R. Owen, M. Heintz, and J. Bessant (Eds.). Wiley, Chichester, UK.
[76]
NWO. 2010. Responsible Innovation. Project Summaries. Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
[77]
Richard Owen, Jack Stilgoe, Phil Macnaghten, Mike Gorman, Erik Fisher, and David H. Guston. 2013. A framework for responsible innovation. In Responsible Innovation, R. Owen, M. Heintz, and J. Bessant (Eds.). Wiley, Chichester, UK.
[78]
RRI tools project. 2014. RRI Tools. Accessed November 14. Retrieved from http://www.rri-tools.eu/.
[79]
Yvonne Rogers. 2012. HCI Theory: Classical, Modern and Contemporary. Morgan and Claypool, San Rafael, CA.
[80]
Elena Simakova and Christopher Coenen. 2013. Visions, hype and expectations: A place for responsibility. In Responsible Innovation, R. Owen, M. Heintz, and J. Bessant (Eds.). Wiley, Chichester, UK.
[81]
Berndt C. Stahl. 2012. Responsible research and innovation in information systems. European Journal of Information Systems 21, 207--11.
[82]
Berndt C. Stahl, Grace Eden, and Marina Jirotka. 2013. Responsible research and innovation in information and communication technology. Identifying and engaging with the ethical implications of ICTs. In Responsible Innovation, R. Owen, M. Heintz, and J. Bessant (Eds.). Wiley, Chichester, UK.
[83]
Bernd Carsten Stahl, Grace Eden, Marina Jirotka, and Mark Coeckelbergh. 2014. From computer ethics to responsible research and innovation in ICT. Information & Management 51, 6 (September 2014), 810--818.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)WeaveSlicer: Expanding the Range of Printable Geometries in ClayProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642622(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Heart and Soul: The Ethics of Biometric Capture in Immersive Artistic PerformanceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642309(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Charting Ethical Tensions in Multispecies Technology Research through Beneficiary-Epistemology SpaceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641994(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. The Ethical Implications of HCI's Turn to the Cultural

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
    ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction  Volume 22, Issue 5
    October 2015
    217 pages
    ISSN:1073-0516
    EISSN:1557-7325
    DOI:10.1145/2814459
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 24 August 2015
    Accepted: 01 May 2015
    Revised: 01 March 2015
    Received: 01 August 2014
    Published in TOCHI Volume 22, Issue 5

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. Active Ingredient
    2. Art
    3. Blast Theory
    4. Thrill Laboratory
    5. Urban Angel
    6. boundaries
    7. consent
    8. discomfort
    9. ethics
    10. integrity
    11. performance
    12. research in the wild
    13. transgression
    14. uncomfortable interactions
    15. withdrawal

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article
    • Research
    • Refereed

    Funding Sources

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)102
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)6
    Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)WeaveSlicer: Expanding the Range of Printable Geometries in ClayProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642622(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Heart and Soul: The Ethics of Biometric Capture in Immersive Artistic PerformanceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642309(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Charting Ethical Tensions in Multispecies Technology Research through Beneficiary-Epistemology SpaceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641994(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)Post-growth Human–Computer InteractionACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/362498131:1(1-37)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Lessons Learnt from a Multimodal Learning Analytics Deployment In-the-WildACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/362278431:1(1-41)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Five Provocations for a More Creative TASProceedings of the First International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems10.1145/3597512.3599709(1-10)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2023
    • (2023)A Design Framework for Ingestible PlayACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/358995430:4(1-39)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Towards Critical Heritage in the wild: Analysing Discomfort through Collaborative AutoethnographyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581274(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2022)The Cost of CultureProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533569(612-628)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
    • (2022)A Scoping Review of Ethics Across SIGCHIProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533511(137-154)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    Full Access

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media