New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism

Interfaces have a history of realism as attempts to map, represent and interact with reality. However, recent changes in the interface, including both the way we understand, use, design and build interfaces, merits a new discussion of its realism. The contemporary interface is both omnipresent and...

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Main Author: Søren Bro Pold
Format: Article
Language:Catalan
Published: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 2020-09-01
Series:Artnodes
Subjects:
Online Access:https://raco.cat/index.php/Artnodes/article/view/373868
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spelling doaj-21ff7089ace140a2aeffbf5eacc99fc92021-06-11T11:35:34ZcatUniversitat Oberta de CatalunyaArtnodes1695-59512020-09-012410.7238/a.v0i24.3283New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realismSøren Bro Pold0Aarhus University (Denmark) Interfaces have a history of realism as attempts to map, represent and interact with reality. However, recent changes in the interface, including both the way we understand, use, design and build interfaces, merits a new discussion of its realism. The contemporary interface is both omnipresent and invisible, at once integrated into everyday objects and characterised by hidden exchanges of information between objects. With the current spread of mobile devices, embedded sensors, cloud services, and data capture, a new interface paradigm, the metainterface, arises where data and software disappear from our devices and into the global cloud. The metainterface indicates that the interface has become more abstract, generalised, but also spatialised in the sense of being ubiquitous, mobile, urban and related to the things of our environment. The metainterface as a concept, industry and art/design practice calls for a new kind of realism which combines what you see (e.g. the data, tools, operations, transactions) with how you see it (the metainterface and its software, networks and executions), including how it sees you (how the user/users are captured, datafied, profiled, computed and ‘executed’). In other ways we need a ‘way of seeing’ that goes beyond the visual and integrates the metainterface and its effects. Currently these effects can be seen as two ways of hiding: 1) Minimalist hiding, e.g. the hiding of the datafication, monitoring and profiling going on in cloud computing infrastructures behind its immediate, minimalist user-interface. 2) Environmental hiding, including hiding its mode of control as smart for example. These dimensions are often combined but can be investigated in workshops for metainterface realism. This article will discuss these options by looking at art that explores and produces alternatives to this seeming disappearance by the artists Ben Grosser, Joana Moll, James Bridle, EL Putnam and workshops by Joana Moll and the authors et al. https://raco.cat/index.php/Artnodes/article/view/373868realism; metainterface; interface criticism; critical theory; the design of transparency
collection DOAJ
language Catalan
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Søren Bro Pold
spellingShingle Søren Bro Pold
New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
Artnodes
realism; metainterface; interface criticism; critical theory; the design of transparency
author_facet Søren Bro Pold
author_sort Søren Bro Pold
title New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
title_short New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
title_full New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
title_fullStr New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
title_full_unstemmed New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
title_sort new ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
publisher Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
series Artnodes
issn 1695-5951
publishDate 2020-09-01
description Interfaces have a history of realism as attempts to map, represent and interact with reality. However, recent changes in the interface, including both the way we understand, use, design and build interfaces, merits a new discussion of its realism. The contemporary interface is both omnipresent and invisible, at once integrated into everyday objects and characterised by hidden exchanges of information between objects. With the current spread of mobile devices, embedded sensors, cloud services, and data capture, a new interface paradigm, the metainterface, arises where data and software disappear from our devices and into the global cloud. The metainterface indicates that the interface has become more abstract, generalised, but also spatialised in the sense of being ubiquitous, mobile, urban and related to the things of our environment. The metainterface as a concept, industry and art/design practice calls for a new kind of realism which combines what you see (e.g. the data, tools, operations, transactions) with how you see it (the metainterface and its software, networks and executions), including how it sees you (how the user/users are captured, datafied, profiled, computed and ‘executed’). In other ways we need a ‘way of seeing’ that goes beyond the visual and integrates the metainterface and its effects. Currently these effects can be seen as two ways of hiding: 1) Minimalist hiding, e.g. the hiding of the datafication, monitoring and profiling going on in cloud computing infrastructures behind its immediate, minimalist user-interface. 2) Environmental hiding, including hiding its mode of control as smart for example. These dimensions are often combined but can be investigated in workshops for metainterface realism. This article will discuss these options by looking at art that explores and produces alternatives to this seeming disappearance by the artists Ben Grosser, Joana Moll, James Bridle, EL Putnam and workshops by Joana Moll and the authors et al.
topic realism; metainterface; interface criticism; critical theory; the design of transparency
url https://raco.cat/index.php/Artnodes/article/view/373868
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