[-empyre-] July on empyre: Screens/Interfaces?

[LAURA LOTTI]

Dear all

Thank you for the great discussion so far, I'm new to the list and found it really insightful. 

I'm just a MA student with a question concerning my research, but I hope some of you could spend two lines to shed some light on this.

My question regards the difference between screen and interface. Clearly the term 'interface' encompasses a wide range of objects - and screens are one of them. But is there an ontological difference between screen and interface? And if so, when is the screen a screen and when an interface (or viceversa)? 
Current studies on the interfaces often refer to screen cultures, film studies, public interfaces (not dissimilar from urban screens), video art, etc. Conversely, the examples of computing art given by Salvatore could be considered screens but are definitely interfaces too. Also, thanks to ultimate technological innovations, screens are interacting more and more with the light, us, the environment thus 'interfacing' more and more with the surrounding reality - if that's correct.

If we accept the (only?) definition of interface given by Cramer and Fuller - and borrowed from the Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary - as 'a surface forming a common boundary of two bodies, spaces, phases' what are the cultural and political implications for screens as interfaces with the digitalization of culture?

I'm aware of current researches on the interface approached from a computational perspective and about examples of software art that critically engage with the concept of interface, however in order for *us* to be experienced, independently of what the code thinks, these digital artefacts need to manifest on the bidimensional surface of a screen and are subjected to an aesthetic perception that in most cases, unfortunately, still doesn't go that further than the look-and-feel.

I'm sorry, I've been thinking about this for a while but really can't find answer. Hope some of you could advise.

Thank you

Laura


On 9 Jul 2012, at 23:16, Simon Biggs wrote:

> Marco is one of our MSc students and doing very interesting stuff too!
> 
> 
> Sent from a mobile device, thus the brevity.
> 
> Simon Biggs
> simon at littlepig.org.uk
> s.biggs at ed.ac.uk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk
> 
> On 9 Jul 2012, at 23:01, "Clough, Patricia" <PClough at gc.cuny.edu> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for these sites     They are great    Patricia 
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of xDxD.vs.xDxD [xdxd.vs.xdxd at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2012 2:56 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] July on empyre: Screens
> 
> Hi Simone, Simon and everyone!
> 
> great topic!
> 
> about this:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Simone Arcagni <simonearcagni at gmail.com<mailto:simonearcagni at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Screens disappear as a external device and becomes definitively an extension of our senses (following the McLuhan "intuition").
> [...]
> The wearable screens open to a new dimension of communication experience, really immersive and aptic more than optic (according to Giuliana Bruno). The next step should be the biological computers or the neuronal devices (many IT labs are working on that).
> 
> In more than one way devices have already become "biological", meaning that they are already interacting with our bodies in deep ways, even creating new senses.
> 
> in 2006 we created a performance ( http://www.artisopensource.net/category/projects/talkers-performance/ ) in which teh body of the performer was a "display" (screen?) of user interactions and, in turn, everything that was heard/shown as sound and video of the performance was generated my the dancer's movements and biological data.
> 
> In the same way Marco Donnarumma produces his Xth Sense ( http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/xth-sense/ ) in which an open source device allows producing information from the body: here music is the "screen" of bio data
> 
> Or as we did in the Electronic Man ( http://www.artisopensource.net/category/projects/electronicman/ for McLuhan's centennial) in which a sense was synthesized on as many as 80 thousand people's bodies using smartphones: whenever someone participated to the performance, everyone else's phone vibrated in real time: a physical, on-body, real-time information visualization that becomes a sense with a global reach, allowing you to experience on your body a digital interaction happening anywhere in the world, instantly.
> 
> And these are, obviously, screens, closer and closer to our brains and nervous systems. Loosing the characteristics of "devices" and becoming more and more senses which change the affordances we perceive in the world.
> 
> Creating new sensibilities and mutating the way we are aware about things, the ways in which we learn, work, relate. And consume (as all these transformations also have the effect of suggesting really "interesting" business models, don't they? )
> 
> all the best!
> Salvatore
> 
> ----
> 
> Salvatore Iaconesi
> 
> AOS - Art is Open Source
> http://www.artisopensource.net
> 
> 
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