Fugitive moments: Artist's report of research project undertaken as part of the Wellcome Trust People's Award (2004-2006)

This report outlines from the perspective of the artistic research processes an Arts/Science collaborative research project. The research explored the potential of generative/ALife systems that would create imagery that echoed the internal flows of dance-like movement, their potential as an operational system for visually-based interactive digital installations with a choreographic sensibility, and the use of viewers' physiological responses to the resulting kinetic imagery as an interactive interface to modulate that imagery. Undertaken over a period of 18 months with Dr Beau Lotto and four of his PhD students, Daniel Hulme, Richard Clarke, David Malkin and Erwan le Martelot at Lottolab – then a research lab at the University of London specialising in the study of perception, now a public research space (see www.lottolab.org) – the cross-disciplinary research researched the impact of visual imagery on viewers' physiology, the development of ALife systems that responded to physiological responses and the creation of an interactive installation that articulated the results of the research