Message in a Bottle: Investigating Bioart Installations as a Transdisciplinary Means of Community Engagement

As exploration of living media, biology, and biotechnology advances HCI, researchers call attention to implications for ethics. We respond with a qualitative study of audience engagement with multimedia bioart installation. Bioart comprises a transdisciplinary practice that brings diverse perspectives in art, science, and technology into dialogue and engages audiences. Understanding a bioart exemplar, Raaz, as disrupting habitual modes of being, we investigate audience experiences in three contexts, elaborating transdisciplinary community engagement that takes seriously living media and biotechnology and informs HCI broadly through vital authenticity, performative reflection, empowered critique, distributed expertise, and revealed dynamics. We discuss how transdisciplinary community engagement functions as a mode of inquiry and design that supports inclusive liminal experiences.