NMC Director Deborah Turnbull Tillman is examining the curatorial process as a practice-based researcher with the Creative Robotics Lab at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW Art & Design. Her research focuses on investigating whether or not the audience can have an authentic experience of interactive art, and if so, what that might mean for the mediums of digital interactive art and the audience's engagement relating to interactive art.

Her study includes 3 public interventions to support the methods present in her practice-based research. The first, Denouement, was an intervention into MusifyGamify for VIVIDMusic 2015. The intervention happened at the Seymour Centre and involved working with emerging practitioners at UNSW's Art & Design Campus in the Media Arts degree. The results have since been published with HCII 2017.

Deborah's second intervention was a reflective practice case study as Exhibition Production Manager of ISEA2015: disturbance in Vancouver BC Canada. Her experience was published as part of Nick Bryan-Kinns, Thecla Shiphorst and David England's Springer publication, titled Curating the Digital. Her book chapter titled Disruption and Reflection: A Curatorial Case Study details her reflections on both distance and onsite (arguably in situ) curating and the tools and language surrounding it.

The third intervention is titled Re/pair and is set to take place during UNSW Art & Design's Big Anxiety Festival. Featuring the prototype works from the artists affiliated with the Creative Robotics Lab, a public exhibition, performance and audience evaluation will take place across the Black Box Theatre and the EpiCentre on campus.

---

Deborah's full-time research was supported by an Australia Post-Graduate Award from 2014-17, courtesy of the Australian Government. She was awarded her doctoral degree in September 2018.