View source for Alexander R. Galloway - The Interface Effect

*[https://pad.xpub.nl/p/XpubAnnotations13-11-19 Pad notes about interface] (not from me but from XPUB 3)
*[https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/shelf/32 Bootleg Library link]

== Description (from bootleg) ==

''Description :

Interfaces are back, or perhaps they never left. The familiar Socratic conceit from the Phaedrus, of communication as the process of writing directly on the soul of the other, has returned to center stage in today's discussions of culture and media. Indeed Western thought has long construed media as a grand choice between two kinds of interfaces. Following the optimistic path, media seamlessly interface self and other in a transparent and immediate connection. But, following the pessimistic path, media are the obstacles to direct communion, disintegrating self and other into misunderstanding and contradiction. In other words, media interfaces are either clear or complicated, either beautiful or deceptive, either already known or endlessly interpretable.

Recognizing the limits of either path, Galloway charts an alternative course by considering the interface as an autonomous zone of aesthetic activity, guided by its own logic and its own ends: the interface effect. Rather than praising user-friendly interfaces that work well, or castigating those that work poorly, this book considers the unworkable nature of all interfaces, from windows and doors to screens and keyboards. Considered allegorically, such thresholds do not so much tell the story of their own operations but beckon outward into the realm of social and political life, and in so doing ask a question to which the political interpretation of interfaces is the only coherent answer.

Grounded in philosophy and cultural theory and driven by close readings of video games, software, television, painting, and other images, Galloway seeks to explain the logic of digital culture through an analysis of its most emblematic and ubiquitous manifestation –  the interface.''

== Intro ==
<br>
<i>"The goal of the book is
two fold, to define the interface , but also to interpret it. Inter
faces are not simply objects or boundary points . They are
autonomous zones of activity. I n terface s are not things, but
rather processes that e ffect a result of whatever kind. For this
reason I will be speaking not so much about particular inter
face
obj ects (screens, keyboards) , but interface effects. And in
speaking about them I will not be satisfied just to say an inter
face
is de fined in such and such a way, but to show how it
exists that way for specific social and historical reasons. I nter
faces
themselves are effects, in that they bring about transfor
mations
in material state s . But at the same time interfaces are
themselves the e ffects of other things, and thus tell the story
of the larger forces that engender them."</i>

= Notes =

== Introduction: The Computer as a Mode of Mediation ==


===Talking about Lev Manovitch "The Language of New Media"===

<i>"The five principles - numeric representation , modularity, automation,
variability, and transcoding - are not to be understood as universal
laws of new media. Rather, they describe some of the
aesthetic p roperties of data, and the basic ways in which information
is created, stored, and rende red intelligible ."</i> p.3

=== About other definitions of new media than Manovith's one ===

<i>[...] "we should remember that more than
one response exists to such a questio n. • It is clear where
M anovich puts his favor: new media are essentially software
applications. But othe rs have answered the same question in
very different ways. The re are those who say that hardware is
as important if not more so than software ( Friedrich Kittler or Wendy H ui Kyong Chun) , or those who focus on the new
forms of social interaction that media do or do not facilitate
(Geert Lovink or Yochai Be nkler) , or even tho se who focus on
networks of information rather than sim ply personal com puters
(Tiziana Terranova or Eugene Thacker)."</i> p.3.-4

=== The true first new media ===

<i>"As the o pening page s divulge, the dirty little secret of The
Language of New Media, and the detail that reveals Manovich's
first passion, is this : cinema was the first new media. New
media did not begin in the 19 8 os in S ilico n Valley; it began a
hundred years p rior at Etienne-Jules M arey' s S tation Physiolo
gique in the outskirts of Paris. The reason fo r this is that
cinema is the first m edium to bring together techniques like
compositing, recombination, digital sampling (the discrete
capture of photographic im ages at a fixed rate through time) ,
and machine automation , techniques that, o f course , are
present in other media, but never as effectively as the singular
synthesis offered by the cinema."</i> p.4

== The interface paradox ==

===  The less they do, the more they achieve and the more they become invisible & unconsidered ===

<i>"Frames, windows , doors, and other thresholds are those
transp arent devices that achieve more the less they do : for
every moment of virtuosic immersion and connectivity, for
every moment of volumetric delivery, of inopacity, the threshold
becomes one notch more invisible , one notch more inoperable."</i> p.25

<i>"As technology, <b>the more a dioptric device erases the
traces of its own functioning (in actually delivering the thing
re presented beyond) , the more it succeeds in its functional
mandate</b> ; yet this very achievement undercuts the ultimate
goal : <b>the more intuitive a device becomes, the more it risks
falling out of media altogether, becoming as naturalized as
air or as common as dirt</b>. To succeed, then, is at best selfdeception
and at wo rst self-annihilation .</i>p.25

=== " Systems work because they don't wo rk. Nonfunctionality
re mains essential for functionality." - Michel Serres ===

<i>" Systems work because they don't wo rk. Nonfunctionality
re mains essential for functionality. This can be
formalized : pretend there are two stations exchanging messages
through a channel. If the exchange succeeds - if it is
perfect, optimal, immediate - then the relation erases itself.
But if the relation remains there , if it exists, it' s because the
exchange has failed. It is nothing but mediatio n . The relation
is a non-relatio n . " '</i> p.26

== Definitions of the Interface ==

=== The interface as a "significant surface" ===

<i>"New media foreground the interface like never before . S creens
of all shapes and sizes tend to come to mind: compute r screens,
ATM kio sks, phone keypads , and so o n . This is what Vilem
Flusser called sim ply a "significant surface, " meaning a twodimensional
plane with meaning em bedded in it or delivered
through it. There is even a particular vernacular adopted to
describe or evaluate such significant surface s . We say " they
are user-friendly," or "they are not user-friendly." "They are
intuitive " or "they are not intuitive . "</i> p.43

=== The interface as a gateway ===

<i>"Still, it is also quite common t o understand interfaces less
as a surface but as a doorway or window. This is the language
of thre sholds and transitions already evoked at the start of the
chapter. Following this position , an interface is not something
that appears before you but rather is a gateway that opens up
and allows passage to some place beyond."</i> p.43


=== The interface as "the place where information moves from one entity to another" ===

<i>"The notion of the interface
becomes very important fo r example in the science of
cybernetic s, for it is the place where flesh meets metal o r, in
the case of systems theory, the inte rface is the place where
information moves fro m one e ntity to another, from o ne node
to another within the system ."</i> p.44

=== The interface as the media itself ===

<i>"Often interfaces are assumed t o be synonymous with media
itself. But what would it mean to say that " interface " and
"media" are two names for the same thing ? The answer is
found in the remediation or layer model of media, broached
already in the introduction, wherein media are essentially
nothing but formal containers housing other p ieces of m edia .
This is a claim most clearly elabo rated on the opening pages
of Marshall Mc Luhan's Understanding Media. Mc Luhan liked
to articulate this claim in term s of media history: a new
medium is invented, and as such its role is as a container for
a previous media format."</i> p.44

=== The interface as "agitation or generative friction between different formats" ===

<i>"This definition is well-established today, and it is a very short
leap from there to the idea of interface, for the interface
becomes the point of transition between different mediatic
layers within any nested system . The interface is an "agitation "
or generative friction between different form ats . I n computer
science , this happens very literally; an "interface" is the name
given to the way in which one glob of code can interact with
another. S ince any given format finds its ide ntity merely in the
fact that it is a container for another format, the concept of
interface and medium quickly collap se into one and the same
thing."</i> p.44

=== The interface as "an area" that "separates and mixes the two worlds that meet together there" ===


<i>"The French author
François Dagognet describes it thus : "The interface . . . consists
essentially of an area of choice. It both separates and
mixes the two worlds that meet together there , that run into
it. It becomes a fe rtile nexus ."7 Dagognet presents the expected
themes of thresholds, doorways, and windows. But he complicates
the story a little bit in admitting that there are com lex
things that take place inside that threshold; the interface is not
simple and transparent but a " fertile nexus."</i> p.45

<i>"The interface is this state o f "being
on the boundary. " It is that moment where one significant
material is understood as distinct from another significant
material. In other words, an interface is not a thing, an interface
is always an effect. It is always a process or a translation." </i> p.46

=== Norman Rockwell, "[https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.1WFiv8Lu1mF733cHiAZ6IgHaJU%26pid%3DApi&f=1 Triple Self-Portrait]" vs Richard A . Williams , " [https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Fimages%2Fg%2FaEIAAOSwfcVUHB7U%2Fs-l300.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 Untitled] (Alfred E . Neuman SelfPortrait)"  ===

[https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.1WFiv8Lu1mF733cHiAZ6IgHaJU%26pid%3DApi&f=1 IMG]
vs
[https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Fimages%2Fg%2FaEIAAOSwfcVUHB7U%2Fs-l300.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 IMG]

[[File:Triple Self-Portrait vs Untitled.png|thumb|Figure 1.1. Norman Rockwell, «Triple Self-Portrait,»  The Saturday Evening Post, February 13, 1 9 6 0 .  © 1 9 6 0 The Norman Rockwell Family Entities.<br>]]

==== About Norman Rockwell, "Triple Self-Portrait" ====

<i>"Unusual side effects emerge from such a co mplicated circulation
of images and meta-images. F irst, the artist paints in
front of an off-white sweep wall, not unlike the antiseptic,
white nowhere land that would later become a staple of science
fiction films like THX 1138 or The Matrix. Inside this off-white
nowhere land, there appears to be no visible outside - no
landscape at all - to locate or orient the artist' s coherent circulation
of image p roduction . But seco nd, and more important,
is the dramatic difference in re presentational and indeed
moral and spiritual vitality between the im age in the mirror
and the picture on the canvas. The image in the mirror is
p resented as a technical or machinic im age , while the p icture
on the canvas is a subjective, expressive image . In the mirror,
the artist is bedraggled, dazzled behind two opaque eyeglass
lenses, performing the rote tasks of his vocation (and evidently
not entirely thrilled about it) ."</i>

<i>"The fact that this is a self-conscious self-po rtrait also assists in making that fourth
level invisible because all the viewer's energies that might have
been reserved for tackling those difficult "meta" questions
about reflections and layers and reflexive circulation of
meaning are exercised to exhaustion before they have the
opportunity to interrogate the frame of the illustration itself."</i>

<i>"self-conscious self-portrait also assists in making that fourth
level invisible because all the viewer's energies that might have
been reserved for tackling those difficult "meta" questions
about reflections and layers and reflexive circulation of
meaning are exercised to exhaustion before they have the
opportunity to interrogate the frame of the illustration itself."</i>

==== About Richard A . Williams, " Untitled (Alfred E . Neuman SelfPortrait) ====

<i>"Being an artist of such great talent, he not only paints a portrait
of him self but does so from the viewer's sub jective vantage
point. In this sense, the interface is a kind of semiotic short
circuit."</i>

<i>"Considering them side by side, Rockwell and Mad p resent
two ways of thinking about the same problem . In the first is
an interface that addresses itself to the theme of the interface ;
Rockwell ' s is an image that addresse s image-making i n
general . But it answers the problem of the interface through
the neurosis of repression. In o rienting itself toward interfaces,
it suggests simultaneously that interfaces don't exist."</i>

<i>"On the other hand, the second image solves the proble m of
the interface through the psycho sis of schizo phrenia. I t returns
forever to the original trauma of the interface itself. Reveling
in the disorientation o f shattered coherence, the second image
makes no attempt to hide the interface ."</i>

<i>"On the one hand Rockwell 's image is inte rnally consistent.
It is an interface that works. The interface has a logic that may
be known and articulated by the interface itself. It works; it
works well.
Mad's image, on the other hand, is an image that doesn't
wo rk. It is an interface that is unstable . It is, as M aurice Blanchet
or Jean-Luc Nancy might say, desoeuvre - nonworking,
unproductive , inoperative , unworkable ."</i>