[-empyre-] week two - MATTER

[Dragan Espenschied]

Welcome Nicholas!

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Nicholas O'Brien <nicholasobri at gmail.com>
wrote:

More recently, whenever I make long car trips (in that
> ever-so-quintessential Americana way), I rarely remember the mile marker,
> or the commemorative plaque, or where I was on my journey, or even the
> actual view. What I do remember is that I turned off the road and
> interrupted my trip - and that this interruption is often a way of
> reminding myself of my journey through the “stuff” of the road (or
> information superhighway if you will).
>
> So, then, what is the objectification of that experience?
>

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/windows-and-mirrors

I recommend checking out this publication.

Bolter and Gromala describe transparency as a value in contemporary
interface design: the user should forget that they're using a computer or
an interface, they should just think about the task. When this
transparency, which is quite difficult to achieve design- and
engineering-wise, breaks, because of an error or interruption, the user is
thrown back to reflect on the computer.

But maximum transparency is just one line of interface design ideology, and
has brought many problems with it as well.

(In interface design, "transparency" is used akin to "network transparent",
which means that information travels through a layer without this layer
being noticeable. So instead of thinking "i am using a software application
on my phone that manages a database of contacts to find Bob's phone numer",
users think "I'm looking up Bob's phone number.")

This moment of reflection, when a computer doesn't perform as expected, was
exploited by glitch artists the most.



-- 
Dragan Espenschied
Digital Conservator
Rhizome
at the New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212-219-1288 x 304
http://www.rhizome.org/
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