Social presence in a co-located networked art installation

This thesis describes the exploratory art research project, Eavesdropping, which aims to increase social presence between individuals in shared public spaces. This internet-based system is designed to create an audio ecology in localized, networked environments like cafes where several computer users are gathered by playing audio from each participant’s laptop and capitalizing on the personal affinity and proximity between individuals and their computers by attracting the attention of others via audio. Two versions of the system were created, the first passive, the second interactive which attempted to increase engagement and immersion to subsequently increase social presence by adding self-representation with the audio and meaningful interaction with the system. User studies involving an engagement and immersion questionnaire designed for this project and an established social presence questionnaire, showed that differences between the versions had a significant negative impact on engagement but did not create an overall change in social presence.