Understanding media multiplicities

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies enable new forms of media artworks. 'Media multiplicities' are defined here as creative media experiences made up of multiples of interacting and coordinated devices. In this paper, we review the state of the art of multiplicitous media artworks and provide a systematic analysis of the novel affordances and different forms such artworks can take, specifically that they are spatial, scalable, scatterable and sensing. We consider the analysis of media multiplicities from the point of view of both user experience and creative production. We offer three primary axes through which a categorisation of multiplicitous media forms can be framed: substrate versus object; composed versus self-organised, and homogeneous versus heterogeneous. We also analyse how the number of elements in the multiplicities (from tens to tens of thousands and beyond) affects the qualities of the experience.