HASTAC Conference notes: Theorizing Interface session (Friday 10:15am)

#3. Theorizing Interface: Metaphors help us comprehend how digitality weaves, binds, encloses, bridges, spans, and navigates across technologies, spaces, and disciplines (from genomics to urban planning). Meeting Room #106. Session Chair: David Liu, Department of Religion, Duke University. Discussion Leader: Lev Manovich, Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego. Panelists: Sylvia Nagl & Sally Jane Norman, Department of Oncology, University College London, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Raranga Tangata: The Weaving Together of People; Nicole Starosielski, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, Reskinning the Digital Surface: Borders and Immobility at the Interface; Sarah Sweeney, Digital Media Arts Program, Mercer County Community College, Way-Finding on the Web: Urban Planning and the Virtual Interface

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Sylvia Nagl & Sally Jane Norman, Department of Oncology, University College London, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Raranga Tangata: The Weaving Together of People

Te Kore - Maori Creation Myth
www.maaori.com/whakapapa/creation.htm

three parts:

the void
form
emergence, light, reality

The weave is artform, craftform.

Studying the Maori creation myth can show how collectively shaped and transmitted narrative can give meaning to human creation.

The Weave.

Weaving highly important to the Maori.

System, holism, interconnectedness, interaction, network, dynamic chnage, emergence.

Like mythological systems, artworks are open to interpretation, leading to idiosyncratic perceptions.

What is needed now is integration across disciplines.

The two speakers each have a mic and notes, and trade off speaking sometimes at the sentence-to-sentence level, nicely handled (I assume intentional weaving of words.

visuals on screen of layering, weaving, spectral interference

How can we devise systems that thrive on encouraging difference?
build knowledge maps, constructs, pass on intergenerational equity to our descendants

can we use artful information to inform?

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Nicole Starosielski, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, Reskinning the Digital Surface: Borders and Immobility at the Interface

what kind of skin is the skin of the interface?

2 level of skin
1) the subject
2) shell, deceptive cover

use of the first meaning has decreased over time in favor of the second

transcending skin tenet of cyborg phrasing

skin as interface
as boundary, harder to define hybrid works

skin as transparent space - enables transactions

skin defines by keeping out - not permeability, but selectivity

Marks, _The Skin of the Film_

_Playas: Homeland Mirage_ video game Jack Stenner. Limited interface exploring a VR model of a town purchased by DHS and converted to use as a training area for police, counterterror, and emergency medical agencies. The interface limits the kind of interaction you have have with the town and its inhabitants.

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Sarah Sweeney, Digital Media Arts Program, Mercer County Community College, Way-Finding on the Web: Urban Planning and the Virtual Interface

New browser window blank screen, so much out there. This is both exciting (so much out there for you) and dreadful (that you won't be able to find what you want).

Kevin Lynch's urban planning handbook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_A._Lynch

1960s book _The Image of the City_

generalized mental picture of the exterior world that is held by the individual

Boston, Jersey City, LA

Lynch principle
sufficiency - allows individual to operate in the environment
web interfaces tend to fall short here

without enviromental image to orient ourselves, must retrace steps
but things change - search for something in digg today, not always get same results tomorrow

organizational methodology
google vs. ask.com pageranks, and different pageranks

alexa ranks through traffic

Lynch principle
Communicability
delicious tries, but substitutes their memory for our own

An environmental image should be safe and with redundancy, cost of mistakes should not be high.

Lynch principle
Adaptability to change
web interfaces adapt, but not the way Lynch is thinking

Makes retention of an env. image difficult.

Current web interfaces make it difficult to create a useful environmental imae.

Lynch doesn't take additional variables into acoount.
didn't anticipate a process of wayfinding that allowed for direct connection from point A to B
(remember Star Trek's Transporter was still 6 years in the future when Lynch wrote)

Gibson cyberspace
Second Life

experimental interface
ColorColony
http://www.colorcolony.com/ (not launched yet, showed demos)
interface made of collections of websites using color coding, spatially represented as a grid, each square = website

dmo around 2:30pm ,main hall

online tends to be self-reinforcing: don't look for what you don't want to find, only see what you want or like.
Enviromental image can help open this narrow approach.

Q&A
Lev Manovich
history of visual and spatial metaphors attempted for online experience

cyberspace
for whatever reasons, these metaphors have tended not to stick, not to be adopted and work

why didn't these metaphors work yet is an area we should study

our physical world is becoming more like the digital world
in 1960s, city smaller, more focused internally

GPS: enter coords, GPS guides you. Like WWW browser, but in the real world.
Not so important knowing how to map from A-B, GPS aids in answering how to get there.

Skin is one of the main topics currently active in architecture. Suggest looking there for that research and discussion.

Metaphors explain some things, hide others.

Didn't seem to accept the comparison of skin and interface, seems to consider the two as two fundamentally different things.