Interface Criticism

by Andersen, Christian Ulrik; Pold, Soren Bro

• ISBN13: 9788779345041
• ISBN10: 8779345042
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-05-20
• Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Summary

From the screen of our laptops, and from the ubiquitous portable devices, smart phones, and media players, to the embedded computation in clothes, architecture and big urban screens, interfaces are everywhere. They are simultaneously demanding our attention and computing quietly in the background, turning action into interaction, and mediating our experience of and relations to the social and environmental. But how can aesthetics respond to this, and how do interfaces set the scene for artistic practices? This book is not another design manual but a critical investigation for readers interested in the aesthetic, cultural and political dimensions of interfaces. With contributions from leading researchers within the field, the book covers a wide range of aesthetic expressions -- including urban screens, wearable interfaces, performances, games, net-art, software art, and sound art, and discusses how new cultures evolve around, for example, open source or live coding. The volume critically investigates the aesthetics of inter-faces in ways that transcend the iconic surface of the graphical user interface and goes beyond the buttons. Ultimately the book develops interface aesthetics as an appropriate paradigm for a critical discussion of the computer.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Interface Criticism	p. 7
Back: Displays and History	p. 19
Monumental Attractions: Toward An Archaeology of Public Media Interfaces	p. 21
The Haptic Interface: On Signal Transmissions and Events	p. 43
Through: Sensation and Perception	p. 61
The Interface at the Skin	p. 63
Interface Perception: The Cybernetic Mentality and Its Critics: Ubermorgen.com	p. 91
Behind: Representation and Computation	p. 115
What Is Interface Aesthetics, or What Could It Be (Not)?	p. 117
The Computation of Space	p. 130
Down: Software and Code	p. 143
Means-end of Software	p. 145
Poesis of Human-Computer Interaction: Music, Materiality and Live Coding	p. 162
Writerly Gaming: Political Gaming	p. 178
Out: Culture and Politics	p. 201
The Net Interface and the Public Sphere	p. 203
Is There Really Only One Word For It? Software Vocabularies in the Expanded Field of Interface Aesthetics	p. 223
Transparent World: Minoritarian Tactics in the Age of Transparency	p. 253
Collective Hallucination and Capitalism 2.0: Scale-free Elections in France	p. 279
About the Authors	p. 293
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