The Digital Interface and New Media Art Installations

Description

This book is about the digital interface and its use in interactive new media art installations. It examines the aesthetic aspects of the interface through a theoretical exploration of new media artists, who create, and tactically deploy, digital interfaces in their work in order to question the socio-cultural stakes of a technology that shapes and reshapes relationships between humans and non-humans. In this way, it shows how use of the digital interface provides us with a critical framework for understanding our relationship with technology. About the Author Phaedra Shanbaum is Lecturer in Digital Arts and Media Education at UCL Knowledge Lab, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Art at the Interface What Is a Digital Interface? A Brief History of Digital Art Chapter Summaries 1 The Aesthetic Interface Toward a Digital Aesthetic of the Interface The Aesthetic Interface and the Mediated Experience of Time Aesthetic Distance, Representationalism, and Cartesian Habits of the Mind The Difficulty with Interactivity The Digital Interface Is Obsolete Place and the Aesthetic Interface 2 The Embodied Interface The Viewer/Participant or the Interface? The Human “Me” and the Technologized “You” The “Real” and the Representational The Re-use of Cultural Forms: Practice, Potentiality, and Instructional Processes 3 The Agential Interface The Agency of Human and Non-human Entities, or Why the Relationship between the Body and Technology Matters The Agential Interface in 768 Pieces Enacting the Agential Cut Collective Spaces of Questioning, Reflection, and Reconsideration 4 Instruction and the Interface The Ideological Effects of Instruction Instruction, Learning Processes, and the Cybernetic Feedback Loop of Interaction Pre-programmed Actions and Unexpected Experiences: Instruction as a Rhetorical Device Peripheral Actions and Unintended Consequences: Instruction and the Filtering Process Shared Ontological Systems and the Emergence of Different Dialogues 5 The Ubiquitous Interface: Part I What is Ubiquitous Computing? A “Shift” in Computing A Restructuring of Interfaces Re-opening the Question of the Interface: Linear Timelines and Finality In Conclusion 6 The Ubiquitous Interface: Part II The Instrumentalization and Commodification of the Ubiquitous Interface “You Are the Controller” The Alternative Ubiquitous Interface “A Radically New Tool” In Conclusion 7 The Implanted Interface Implanting the Interface The Limited and Limitless Possibilities of the Implant Support: Agency, Identity, and the Implant Mediate: The Social “Time Capsule” Enhance: Performing the Visible Invisible Remediate: Disembodiment, Transcendence, and the Implant Conclusion/Postscript Bibliography Index