User:Δεριζαματζορπρομπλεμιναυστραλια/Graduatreadings/LANGOFNM

the interface (λανγθαγε οφ νες μεδια)

Blade runner 82- macintosh computer 84

MAC-GUI, remained true to the modernist values of clarity and funtionality

then customisation of guis

guis vision of the future articulation; clearly drawn lines between human and its techn. creations, decay not tolerated +In cyberspace we have to work to forget (activity invisible to the user)

all culture, past and present, came to be filtered through a computer with its particular human computer interface

STEPHEN JOHNSONs INTERFACE CULTURE makes a claim for the cultural siginficance of comp.interface

ine semiotic terms the comp interface acts as a code that carries cultureal messages in a variety of media. access of info-passes from the interface of the browser to the interface of the OS. in cultural communication a code is rarely a neutral transport mechanism, it usually affects the messages transmitted with its help

a code also provides its own model of the world,its own logical system or ideology, so subsequent cultural messages or whole languages created with this code will be limited to its accompanying model, system or ideology

.non-transparency of the code

whorf-sapir hypothesis: the human thinkins is limited by the code of natural language, the speakers of diff. languages perceive the world differently + GEORGE LAKOFFS cognitive lingustics

the interface shapes how the comp.user conceives the computer itself.it also determined how users think of anymedia object accessed via a computer

by organising data in particular ways the interface provides disctinkt models of the world.

for instance, a hierarchical file system assumes the world can be organised in a logical multilevel hierarchy. In contrast, a hypertext model of WWW arranges the world as a non hierarchical system rules by metonymy.

cut and paste : this operation renders insignificant the traditioan distinction between spatial and temporal media, it is also bling in traditional distinctions in scale (cutpaste a single pixel, a whole movie), but also between media

both work and leisure applications use the same tools and metaphors of GUI

industrial society- clear separation work-leisure inf. society- ;-

if the human comp interface becomes a key semiotic code of the inf. society as well as a meta-tool how does this affect the funxtion of cultural obj and art objects?.= > new media artwork-content and interface, 2 levels, old dichotomies- form//content and content//medium now content//interface. but this applies to visualisations of quantified data and so on, but modern artists assumed that content and form cant be separated, from abstraction of 10s to process of 60s artists continued to assure the impossibility of painting some preexisting content. paradox-many new media artworks= informational dimensions, experience include retrieving looking thinkign at quantified data. at the same time they have more traditional experiental or aeshetic dimensions which justify their status rather as art than inf.design. (dimensions include reconfiguration of space time and surface), a particular formal and material experience. To change the interface even slighlty is to change the work dramatically

in art the connection between content and form /interface is motivated (interface and content cant be separate levels, they merge into one entity)

T HE LANG UAGE OF CU LT URA L INTE RF AC ES

HCI AND physical intput and output devices

HCI consist of metaphors used to conceptualize the organizatio nof computer data. macinttosh interface introduced by apple 1984 uses the metaphor of the files and folders arranged in a dekstops.

HCI includes ways of manipulating data, grammar of meaninfull actions

The term hci introduced when computer was primarly a tool for work

90s computer becomes universal machine not only to author but to distribute, store and access all media.

distribution---interfacing to predominantly cultural data

cultural interface, prototypical ones of the 90s

why look cultural interfaces look the way they do?

manovich: the language of them is largely made up from elements of other cultural forms (like 90s sites and magazine layouts)

forms; cinema-printed word-general purpose comp.interface

P R I N T E D W O R D!!!>> 80s 90s text became the first cultural medium subjected in digitisation in a massive way. TEXT AS METALANGUAGE OF COMPUTER MEDIA, a CODE IN WHICH ALL OTHER MEDIA IS REPRESENTED, also primamry means of communication between user- computer.

if computers use text as their metalanguage, cultural interfaces in their turn inherit the principles of text organisation developed by human civilisation. one of these is the PAGE (born in the first centuries of the christian era when the clay tablet and papyrus roll replaced by the CODEX)

cultural interfaces rely on our familirary with page interface while they try to stretcth its definition to new things

hypercad APPLE

WORKS THAT REFUSE THE PAGE METAPHOR::::>

WEBSTALKER I/O/D COLLECTIVE, 1997, renders the networks of hyperliks that pages embody, http://bak.spc.org/iod/

NETOMAT meta-browser -MACIEJ WISKIEWSKI, 1999, http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/1705/

hyperlinking as opposing to book reading tradition

roman jakobson under the influence of binary logic of computers, information theory and cybernetics>>> >>>>radically reduced rhetorics to two figures>>metaphor and metonymy. www and metononymy.

--- THE POETICS OF NAVIGATION---->--- THE POETICS OF NAVIGATION---->

And yet, if I am right to claim that the key feature of computer space is its navigability, we need to be able to address this feature theoretically.

classic navigable computer spaces. The 1978 project Aspen Movie Map, designed at the MIT Architecture Machine Group, headed by Nicholas Negroponte (the group later expanded into the MIT Media Laboratory), is acknowledged as the first interactive virtual navigable space, and also as the first hypermedia program to be shown publicly. The program allowed the user to "drive" through the city of Aspen, Colorado.

Jeffrey Shaw's Legible City (1988-1991), another well-known and influential computer navigable space, is also based on an existing city. it is an imaginary city made from 3-D letters. In contrast to most navigable spaces whose parameters are chosen arbitrarily, every value of virtual space in Legible City (Amsterdam and Karlsruhe versions) is derived from the actual existing physical space it replaces. Each 3-D letter in the virtual city corresponds to an actual building in a physical city; the letter's proportions, color, and location are derived from the building it replaces. By navigating through the space, the user reads the texts composed by the letters; these texts are drawn from the archive documents describing the city's history.

Tamás Waliczky's The Forest (1993)