Martin(LB)-thesis outline

Aim: To analyze the politics implied in the construction of digital interfaces and to explore their construction as a critical means of manifesting alternative politics.

Intro: An everyday computer can be thought of as consisting of three layers. On one end is situated the actual computational hardware: the underlying technicalities that store, process, and transfer information. At the other end we find the human subject. This is the terrain of subjectivities, understandings, emotions, ideologies, and the many other conditions that inform our human experience.

In between these two worlds lies the interface: that which allows for their interrelation, which mediates the interactions the two may have with one another. When any of us use a computer, an act whose ubiquity is at this point trivial, we interact not with the actual computation underneath, but rather with the interface that lies above. It is another trivial statement to say that our use of computers has drastically altered our experiences and world views. Through computers we have come to build and disseminate narratives, defined cartographies, and enacted realities that have left the virtual and stepped into worlds of physical matter.

It is the aim of this thesis to show that the formation of digital interfaces is not neutral. It is inherently political. Through the construction of these interfaces, we do much more than simply enhance “user experience”. Rather, as mediators between ourselves and the mechanics of computation, the construction of digital interfaces comes to also construct the cosmologies we inhabit. Taking this as a starting point, this thesis first aims to examine the ways in which contemporary digital interfaces have come to inform contemporary cosmologies. Yet it is also my aim to present the construction of digital interfaces as a critical means by which to enact alternative relations to computational material, which could open up possibilities for new subjectivities and cosmologies.

Outline: Part 1: A survey of relevant concepts that give background to my argument. - Linguistics (signification, materials to concepts, networks) - Ideology (Envisioning Power, relation between ideas and power, cosmologies) - Agency/worldbuilding (Dorothy Holland, social construction of reality) - Media? (McLuhan, Kittler) Part 2: The political implications of contemporary digital interfaces. - The stated aims of interface design and their hidden imperatives. - Perspectives shaped through digital interfaces - Implications in larger political context Part 3: The construction of digital interfaces as a means of manifesting political alterities. - Revisiting topics of agency, signifiers. - Case studies which propose alternative relationships to the materialities of computation - Implications Bibliography: - Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, Dorothy Holland - ¬Polymorphic Possibilities and Molecular Sex, Johanna Bruckner - Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway - The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan - Typewriter, Film, Gramophone, Friedric Kittler - Envisioning Power, Eric R. Wolf - In Free Fall, A Thought Experiment in Vertical Perspective, Hito Steyerl - …