User:Cristinac/Interview

• pictures to be posted soon

What are you working on at the moment?

Over the course of the second trimester I've been concentrating on a few things, such as cognitive processing, reading and interfering with the interface. Reading becomes a software application in itself. As such, there is a sort of materiality that is ascribed to the act, which has caused many a debate: if we read on a tablet, from a newspaper, from books or from our phones, this will alter our experience. However, with the accelerating intake of data, this action is becoming more and more similar to viewing images: searching for key interest points on a page and jumping from one signal to another instead of a slow and methodical procession of each word.

You did a project that had to do with CAPTCHA and mentioned interfering with the interface. Do you think the CAPTCHA project dealt with these topics?

The environment on which the text is presented is in a sense an interface. In fact, one could argue that the notation system of a language is in itself one because it makes abstract thoughts accessible. For this project I made a book in which every word of a given text is transposed into CAPTCHA form. Complimentary to this, there was also a website which forced the reader to go through a text line by line, by solving the CAPTCHA challenges in order to progress to the next one.

CAPTCHAs have a history of being computational hieroglyphs that can only be deciphered by humans. I tried to slow down the meaning making process by inviting the reader to ponder upon each word. I was interested in how you could organize someone's attention. By manipulating the reading interface, the user is forced to adopt a mathematical attitude: he or she has to go through each line to understand the whole, as opposed to ‘literary’, ‘close’ or ‘deep’ reading where the user can take the liberty to read words selectively. It is interesting to think how this system has surreptitiously infiltrated itself in the daily noise of browsing online, so much so that it only recovers visibility when it asks for a particularly unusual combination of words, thus drawing attention to the exchange between access and knowledge.

To me it sounds like your purpose is to interfere with the reading experience. You seem to design this with the user in mind, but is the algorithm part of the user experience? How does the algorithm behind the interface count in your practice?

That's a good question. I haven't gone to extra lengths to make the algorithm visible..

Is that a conscious choice?

It's something that I need to think about more. Although the code is public and available for the taking, this is not directly indicated in the work. At the moment I am working on making the code customizable and accessible for others to create their own CAPTCHAs and turn the labour that it takes into something enjoyable and rewarding for the reader. There could be multiple uses for such a system, but ideally every reader would turn their favourite book into a CAPTCHA database and use it on their website to share with passers by. A book club spreading through the network.

But returning to your question, I am interested in revealing how a system works, and how certain decisions about its functionality have been made. Design tends to preoccupy itself with removing friction to the point where there is no indication of the complex structure lying behind the surface. It conceals the connection between process and presentation. What results is fiction.

Do you have particular inspiration for this? You seem to want to lead the viewer into a particular direction, but for example a lot of commercial design also wants to do that but for their own ends. Where do you think you stand?

I've always had an issue with the fact that the ethics for design rely in aesthetics. This is something that has been largely discussed by the artistic avant-garde of the twentieth century, but the implications of the debate are still present, now at an even more accelerated rhythm. I believe good design is sincere about the object it is preoccupied with and does not attempt to obscure the workings of a system to the point of its disappearance.

Your previous work for a group project for making an interface for clicking and swiping. In that project, did you also consider leaving the viewer to do particular things?

In that project, we employed a different technique. It was a reflection on gestures that have become second nature to us. Something as simple as swiping or clicking regulates a wide range of commands that allow communication with technological devices. The medium of the game was particularly important in communicating our idea because it contains rules by definition. Games arise through constraints, the limits decide the structure. So we used this to our advantage and reduced the choices available to the participant to a minimum: the only option you have is whether to play along or not. As you begin the game, you are automatically assigned to one of the two teams depending on your device. If you're on a laptop, you will be part of the clicking team, whereas if you are on a phone or a pad, you will be a swiper. So the technology you are using has already determined your position in the game. It's quite symbolic.

You mentioned that you were thinking to work on a new project. What are you plans regarding that?

It is still in the making, but the idea is to make a browser extension that gives you feedback on your performance: if you spend enough time on a website you get positive reinforcement and perhaps points too, which allows you to compare your performance to that of your friends'. It's about regulating your own attention. It has a sort of humorous aspect to it, I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

Comparing yourself to others and getting rewards is something that is very common in social media. Is that the reason why you want to appropriate it in your work?

Yes, actually, it's something that people are familiar with. There are now two kinds of gazes directed at the individual: the external and the internal one. Of course there's also the notion of the technology of self that it parodies: the constant need to optimize one's self and the recent trend of self quantification raise important questions. To what extent is it a helpful method? Can self improvement be achieved by breaking down our actions in numbers?

Really interesting what you said about humour, do you see that in your work as important?

I think humour is an important communicational element that connects to the audience by building upon closeness with the tools at use. It is welcome, but hopefully not central.