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