Didactic experiences in the public realm: AI, interactivity, and playfulness for empowering eco-change

Artificial Intelligence (AI) rapidly adapts to diverse audience engagement modes in Digital Arts, either interactive or non-interactive forms. These engagements create potential alliances for intelligent eco-didactic environments in the public realm. Studies show that interactivity positively affects the learning experience; hence, the coalition between AI and Digital Art has the potential to result in enhanced eco-art experiences. This collaboration could augment the eco-message and lead to behavior shift. This paper explores the interactive engagement modes in different art mediums to identify their eco-didactic potential. The study adopts a mixed methods approach, engaging with causal-comparative qualitative content analysis research. We collected secondary data from various mediums to define the characteristics of the engagement modes in eco-art, digital art, and AI artworks. Finally, we interviewed mixed-media artists to explore the technologies used in these art mediums, the different engagement modes they adopt, and eco-didactic possibilities. As a result, we found that incorporating aspects such as interactivity, coherence, aesthetics, playfulness, and meaning, can increase the impact of eco-didactic experiences. In addition, AI creates new possibilities for these experiences with its popularity and features such as real-time data utilization, personalization, and generative reciprocal dialogues which facilitate the understanding of complex environmental issues.