Towards a Conceptual Framework and an Empirical Methodology in Research on Artistic Human-Computer and Human-Robot Interaction
Uwe Seifert, Jin Hyun · InTech eBooks · 2008
In order to develop a new approach to the scientific study of the musical mind, cognitive musicology has to be complemented by research on human-computer and human-robot interaction. Within the computational approach to mind, interactionism or embodied cognitive science using robots for modeling cognitive and behavioral processes provides an adequate framework for modeling internal processes underlying artistic and aesthetic experiences. The computational framework provided by cognitive science corresponds to the fourth stage in traditional psychological research methodology enabling theory-building and is based on model and recursion theory. The approach of cognitive science to the mind via computational modeling related to psychology may be conceived of as an empirical research strategy resulting from of these theories. This traditional approach of cognitive science focusing mainly on individual internal processing has to be supplemented by a computational approach to the mind taken into account intermental functioning embedded in social environments based on processes of social interaction and the use of cognitive artifacts. Therefore, cognitive musicology has to be supplemented by research on humancomputer interaction, especially by research on human-robot interaction, or more generally by research on the interaction of humans with algorithmic agents. For us, new media art environments seem to be the most appropriate place to extend the classical laboratory situation to the study of the relation between intermental and intramental processes in a natural and social environment. We argue that in order to cope with the resulting new research questions, an integrated approach has to be developed. We are trying to develop such an approach using computational modeling of intermental and intramental processing in connection with traditional empirical approaches to data acquisition and analysis from sociology and psychology. Structured observation of human-robot interaction within new media environments seems at present to be the best starting point for prospects of empirical research to achieve an integrated research method, because concerning the accepted methodological standard set by representational measurement theory for psychology and sociology, it can be viewed as measurement. Furthermore, using human observers as measurement devices instead of technical measurement instruments takes into account the complexity of the "stimuli" and "situation" under study. LEGO Mindstorms robots and structured observation were used in our exploratory studies in order to gain first insights into problems and pitfalls of approaches combining computational modeling from cognitive science and classical empirical research from the