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From the screen of our laptops, and from the ubiquitous portable devices, smart phones, and media players, to the embedded computation in clothes, architecture and big urban screens, interfaces are everywhere. They are simultaneously demanding our attention and computing quietly in the background, turning action into inter-action, and mediating our experience of and relations to the social and environmental. But how can aesthetics respond to this, and how do interfaces set the scene for artistic practices?Interface Critisism is not another design manual but a critical investigation for readers interested in the aesthetic, cultural and political dimensions of interfaces. With contributions from leading researchers within the field, the book covers a wide range of aesthetic expressions - including urban screens, wearable interfaces, performances, games, net-art, software art, and sound art, and discusses how new cultures evolve around, for example, open souce or live coding.The volume critically investigates the aesthetics of interfaces in ways that transcend the iconic surface of the graphical user interface and goes beyond the buttons. Ultimately the book develops interface aesthetics as an appropriate paradigm for a critical discussion of the computer. Cover -- Title Page -- Colophon -- Contents -- Interface Criticism -- Aesthetics Beyond Buttons* -- Monumental Attractions -- Toward An Archaeology of Public Media Interfaces -- From signboards to placards and billboards -- The advent of dynamic displays -- Magic lantern projections - in reality and imagination -- The world-as-attraction on Robida's "Immense Glass Plates" -- Coda: Los Angeles 2009 -- Notes -- Works cited -- The Haptic Interface -- On Signal Transmissions and Events -- The exploration of the haptic signal in video art of the 60s -- The 'signaletic event' in art, television, and digital media -- Notes -- Works cited -- The Interface at the Skin -- The dream of ideal communication -- Bridging communication chasms -- Telepathy -- Immediateness -- Skin Probes -- Performing Philips -- Performing communication -- Signs of data and discourses -- Concluding remarks -- Notes -- Works cited -- Interface Perception -- The Cybernetic Mentality and Its Critics: Ubermorgen.com -- Media culture, perception and the interface -- Ubermorgen's interface activism -- GWEI - disrupting the feedback -- Psych|OS - Cybernetic noir -- The conditions for criticism -- Interface mentality -- Perceiving interface perception -- Notes -- Works cited -- What Is Interface Aesthetics, or What Could It Be (Not)? -- Notes -- Works cited -- The Computation of Space -- 0. Preface -- 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6 -- Notes -- Works cited -- Means-End of Software -- Means to end -- Means as end -- Means -- Means without ends -- End -- Notes -- Works cited -- Poesis of Human-Computer Interaction -- Music, Materiality and Live Coding -- ixi software -- Live coding -- Poesis -- Tools and machines -- Human-computer interaction: searching for the truth of the machine -- Distributed agency -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Works cited -- Writerly Gaming: Political Gaming.
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