User:Silviolorusso/research-method/notes--fuller-impossibilityofinterface

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Notes of: "The Impossibility of Interface", Matthew Fuller


interface in computing, interface in society


GUI -> computing becomes democratized


users got a visual and spatial sense of what they were doing


what in common between software interface and other kinds of interfaces?


Breda Laurel: An interface is a contact surface. it reflects:


1. the physical properties of the interactors

2. the functions

3. the balance of power and control


(like button)


three modes of interface:


interface as distributed and indivisible from the system of which is part (environment)


interface as monitoring and control, but not real one


interface as a structure that allow the user to manipulate, alter and destroy. 




Software: Information and Matter


interface as a tool to recognize processes internal to the computer. Katherine Hayles: virtuality. cultural perception


recognition and interpretation through information, a conceptual device. Ceasura between matter and information. 


informational patterns have always a materiality when interpreted.


software: interpenetration of info patterns into others info patterns. (two levels)




Metaphor


model of set, canvas, darkroom in multimedia applications. assumption: the metaphor will gradually be erased from interface. is it happening?

(anti-mac interface) <a href="http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html">http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html</a> (sebastian's idea with mac's bottom bar)


metaphors: explaining the function of a device by referring to a pre-existing apparatus. 


Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors we Live By, 1980


functionality increases -> metaphor usefulless dicreases


magnifying glass as metaphor:


- search in os (sherlock)

- zoom in photoshop


asymmetry


faithfulness to the upgrade path: keeping the metaphor 


homogenisation


computer as "universal machine"




I Thought I was Seeing Convicts 


Harun Farocki


Prison footages and computer interfaces


guards staging gang fights in prison and watching them from watchtowers.




Interface as distributed throughout and indivisible


Interface of exercise yard with control devices and monitoring ones. User is a prison officer


segment with camera. footage watched by a guard. 


Where is the interface?


This interface is not only representational as a desktop for instance. 


interface allows us to analyze patterns and processes. How they link. 


Deleuze: shift from a disciplinary society which operates by compartmentalizing life, by ordering and naming; to a society of control where behavior is modulated.


Discipline  vs control.



Prison as a series of interfaces -> managerial process (nazis?) 


Discipline makes the interface discrete, neutral.


Interface between discipline and control. 


Interface not solely as representation.


The links between instruction and objects are always political, technical and aesthetic. 


Experiment at Xerox.




Interface as monitoring and control of a reductive, indexical map of separate elements



pieces of software in Farocki's video. 


Examples: 

-floorplan, switching lights

-security system in supermarket

-bakery machinery


Bakers don't know how to bake. No relationship to the actual procedure. Alienation. Push button bakers. (relationship to the machine)


call center workers. task is to be an interface. 


in this case thick surface. "mode of  information".


When an interface promises to be the simplest, it has to be assaulted with questions. 




Interface as independent associational structure 


here interface correspond to the logical processes of a computer


Steven Poole, "Trigger Happy"


Untitled game, Jodi


axioms of games


Pong / Tetris


Consistent set of properties in videogames. 


Realism: internal consistency.


Donald Norman: "Interaction with the task, not the with the computer"


virtuality as becoming and as involvement 


virtuality: not something without reality, but something that follows a given plan to become real.


The task is to reformulate the task


interface designer is a system designer. 


in interface design: tendency to close down what counts as an element within a system. 


Paul Edwards, a presentation of a computer game 



Microsoft Words vs games


simulation games and games devoted to play. 


-simulation: primacy of realism 


word simulates writing machine


simulation of CMYK and RGB


"Softwares that reveals its processes as it enacts them."




The one inside the other


the three kinds of interface can operate one inside on other


WYSIWYG -> 2. interface of control of a reductive map with the convention of 3. interface as independent associational structure


control interface unleashed by automation


reluctance by designers and artists to use computers in the initial stage of a project. 


Undo function: working with the undo (linearity)


{a non linear undo function}



Distinction between first and second order control. 


first case: thermostat


second order: overview, interpretation and reaction. 


"Human data processor"



models of discipline and control are recapitulated at a structural level inside of the interface and the subject modeled by it. 




Design: there are people connected to this computer. It will shut down in_10_minutes


Testing the product vs testing the user


Temporarity of efficiency. 


bastardisation 




There is no calculus of becoming


How open up the process of interface design?


Jackson Mac Low: poet as maker of a framework 


Open Work, Eco


non-determinate processes of chance 


Franco Berardi:  "social universe  adequate to technological and communication potential of actual social brainpower, we call it Reinassance"


slow deliberate violence of the interface


unleashing of patterns of potentiality and innovation 


recombinant intelligence


interface - technology and communication - society