Curating conversations across the arts: utilising Internet of Things technologies in arts audience research.

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The Principal Investigator (PI) has developed a reputation for designing and leading innovative research projects across a diverse range of art forms. This study responds to a demand identified in the PI's AHRC Cultural Value project, and her AHRC Creative Economy funded project, through which she developed QUAL (www.qual.org.uk), a qualitative research web-based resource designed with and for arts practitioners and organisations. The PI has identified a need for innovative, cost-effective qualitative audience research experiences that build the in-house research capacity of arts organisations. As an experienced and highly skilled research leader within the arts, the PI's leadership will bring unique insights, cohesion and knowledge to a complex research study that explores the capacity building and creative potential of digital technology within arts research. This Leadership Fellowship will create a transformational step change in arts audience research by harnessing the complementary skills and talents of her specialist team of Research Assistants, programmers and coders based at the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Design Informatics. This ambitious and unique project, made possible and led by the PI, will reimagine the current Ethnobot Internet of Things (IoT) App technology developed by this study's Research Assistants, by advancing the value of chatbot technology in qualitative research. The Ethnobot is an ethnographic research chatbot App for smartphones, pre-programmed with sets of questions and follow up responses in order to curate conversations and capture user's in-the-moment emotions and thoughts on a particular event. This study will advance the research on the use of IoT and AI in qualitative arts audience research through Ethnobot App specifications designed to meet multiple case studies research needs, artistic experiences and audiences. The Ethnobot audience research experiences will be developed specifically for nine artistic projects especially co-commissioned (by the PI and the case study organisation) for this project. The diverse nature of the case study organisations is one of this study's key strengths, as the Ethnobot App technology will be developed and diversified across the different audiences and creative contexts. The result will be Ethnobot Apps that have been explored, developed and stress-tested along a continuum of artistic research contexts, with mobile public art experiences at one end and performance-based research experiences at the other. Specifically in the mobile context, the PI and the team will use the Ethnobot App mobile technologies to explore community regeneration and the lived experiences and impact of public and street art projects and installations among artists, audiences and stakeholders across Scotland's urban and coastal communities. The constellation of organisations brought together by the PI will utilise audience development research projects with: University of Edinburgh's Centre for Research Collections (https://collections.ed.ac.uk), Leith Late (digital mural trail) (www.leithlate.co.uk), Open/Close Dundee (www.openclosedundee.co.uk), The State (www.thestateleith.com), and Room 8 Studio (https://room8studio.wixsite.com/room8studio). In the performance-based context the team will create Ethnobot IoT App research experiences that become an extension and / or embedded in the artistic experience. They will do this through four specially co-commissioned projects with the Red Note Ensemble (www.rednoteensemble.com), Leith Late (film installation) (www.leithlate.co.uk), Craft Scotland (www.craftscotland.org) and NeON (www.northeastofnorth.com). On completion of this Fellowship, the project's Ethnobot Apps will be made freely downloadable from the PI's QUAL website, together with the case study examples and a user guide.