Performative Materiality and Theoretical Approaches to Interface

tags: Human-Computer Interaction

Notes

history of investigations of materiality and the specificity of media in critical theory and aesthetics

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Performative materiality is based on the conviction that a system should be understood by what it does

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material substrates of computing — its drives, tracks, disks, and fundamental physical supports

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Kirschenbaum’s definitions, forensic materiality refers to evidence, while formal materiality refers to the codes and structures of human expression.

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what they are rather than what they do

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extend, rather than replace, this understanding. Performative materiality suggests that what something is has to be understood in terms of what it does, how it works within machinic, systemic, and cultural domains.

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extending the study of digital materiality to the analysis of elaborate systems and their interdependent modular components.

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Not only are all of these elements material, but they are locked into relations with each other that are governed by their material design and constraints

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shifts the emphasis from acknowledgement of and attention to material conditions and structures towards analysis of the production

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The materiality of the system, no matter how stable, bears only a probabilistic relation to the event of production, which always occurs only in real time and is distinct in each instance.

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If every reading produces a text anew then the production of a text is the fundamental work of reading

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interesting "Code is Data" kind of thing here - text as code the reading of which produces some kind of memory state

meaning as a result of engagement, the text is performed, rather than received.

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Concepts of co-dependencies, contingencies, and syntactic relations replaced the lists of keys and images in old dream books, which lost favor except among fortune tellers and carnival psychics.

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Meaning is use, as Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, to which we can add, such use is always circumstantial and situational.

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we chart the shift from a concept of things as entities to a concept of them as events, from a notion of what is to that which is always in flux, from a literal to a contingent materiality that is exposed by the performative dimension of use.

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as if the cultural world were turned into a natural world and could be "read" with empirical, positivist methods, as if the detailed, minute, and careful description of physical properties reveals inherent or self-evident values

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the technical qualities of print media necessary for avant-garde approaches to typographic design — using diagonals, mixed fonts, and so on — were part of letterpress from the time of the invention of movable type in the 15th century. But they were not conceptually in view until the 20th. Why? Because the aesthetic language on which they were based had not been invented. The innovation was conceptual, not technical.

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my second agenda, to address ways in which the insights from critical theory could lead to a humanistic interface design

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the mechanistic methods — such as eye tracking — used to analyze user experiences of websites seem to be premised on forgetting everything we ever learned from textual studies.

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"Representations" are presentations, rhetorical arguments expressed in graphical, textual, visual form.

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The "you" and "I" of speaking, now shifting in part towards the "we" of the hive mind, are indicative of change in the enunciative apparatus of the digital.

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Again the flux and change of material conditions requires that we shed our atavistic attachment to the notion of things and shift into a realization that all apparent things are events.

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tenets of media archaeology acknowledge a temporal dimension to the activities of algorithmic production, the constant cycles of reiteration that are one of the crucial and distinctive qualities of code.

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We are aware that digital interface seems more mutable and flexible than that of a book, but is this really true? The interface is not an object. Interface is a space of affordances and possibilities structured into organization for use. An interface is a set of conditions, structured relations, that allow certain behaviors, actions, readings, events to occur.

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emphasis on maximum efficiency in the user-centered experience.

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dominant paradigm in the human-machine relationship has come from the engineering community.

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basic principles for design methodology and display that are premised on a pragmatic, but highly mechanistic, analysis of a user’s abilities to process information effectively.

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user-as-consumer model, the assumptions of which do not match those appropriate to analysis of a humanities-based experience (where goals of distraction, engagement, flow experience and pleasure-driven activity are not goal-oriented, but motivated by the process)

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The "text" of an interface is not a thing, stable and self-evident, whose meaning can be fixed simply by a detailed reading of its elements. An interface is a space in which a subject, not a user, is invoked. Interface is an enunciative system.

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Can we conceive of models of interface34 that are genuine instruments for research? That are not merely queries within pre-set data that search and sort according to an immutable agenda? How can we imagine an interface that allows content modeling, intellectual argument, rhetorical engagement?

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foreground ambiguity and uncertainty, unresolvable multiplicities in place of singularities and certainties. Sustained interpretative engagement, not efficient completion of tasks, would be the desired outcome.

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ways to show the history of the rewritable substrate and expose the palimpsest of traces held in memory.

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Stanford’s site privileges the institutional identity of the researchers and their place within that specific project’s support

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The very notion of "authorship" in Google is usefully problematic.

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Create fragmented and correlated points of view that resist self-evident reification.

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re-order familiar conventions

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constellationary

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Multiple imaging modes that create palimpsestic or parallax views of objects make it more difficult to imagine reading as an act of recovering truth, and render the interpretative act itself more visible.

NOTER_PAGE: (16 . 0.5579668760708166)

More attention to acts of producing and less emphasis on product, the creation of an interface that is meant to expose and support the activity of interpretation, rather than to display finished forms, would be a good starting place.

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Notes

history of investigations of materiality and the specificity of media in critical theory and aesthetics

Performative materiality is based on the conviction that a system should be understood by what it does

material substrates of computing — its drives, tracks, disks, and fundamental physical supports

Kirschenbaum’s definitions, forensic materiality refers to evidence, while formal materiality refers to the codes and structures of human expression.

what they are rather than what they do

extend, rather than replace, this understanding. Performative materiality suggests that what something is has to be understood in terms of what it does, how it works within machinic, systemic, and cultural domains.

extending the study of digital materiality to the analysis of elaborate systems and their interdependent modular components.

Not only are all of these elements material, but they are locked into relations with each other that are governed by their material design and constraints

shifts the emphasis from acknowledgement of and attention to material conditions and structures towards analysis of the production

The materiality of the system, no matter how stable, bears only a probabilistic relation to the event of production, which always occurs only in real time and is distinct in each instance.

If every reading produces a text anew then the production of a text is the fundamental work of reading

meaning as a result of engagement, the text is performed, rather than received.

Concepts of co-dependencies, contingencies, and syntactic relations replaced the lists of keys and images in old dream books, which lost favor except among fortune tellers and carnival psychics.

Meaning is use, as Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, to which we can add, such use is always circumstantial and situational.

we chart the shift from a concept of things as entities to a concept of them as events, from a notion of what is to that which is always in flux, from a literal to a contingent materiality that is exposed by the performative dimension of use.

as if the cultural world were turned into a natural world and could be "read" with empirical, positivist methods, as if the detailed, minute, and careful description of physical properties reveals inherent or self-evident values

my second agenda, to address ways in which the insights from critical theory could lead to a humanistic interface design

the mechanistic methods — such as eye tracking — used to analyze user experiences of websites seem to be premised on forgetting everything we ever learned from textual studies.

"Representations" are presentations, rhetorical arguments expressed in graphical, textual, visual form.

The "you" and "I" of speaking, now shifting in part towards the "we" of the hive mind, are indicative of change in the enunciative apparatus of the digital.

Again the flux and change of material conditions requires that we shed our atavistic attachment to the notion of things and shift into a realization that all apparent things are events.

tenets of media archaeology acknowledge a temporal dimension to the activities of algorithmic production, the constant cycles of reiteration that are one of the crucial and distinctive qualities of code.

emphasis on maximum efficiency in the user-centered experience.

dominant paradigm in the human-machine relationship has come from the engineering community.

basic principles for design methodology and display that are premised on a pragmatic, but highly mechanistic, analysis of a user’s abilities to process information effectively.

user-as-consumer model, the assumptions of which do not match those appropriate to analysis of a humanities-based experience (where goals of distraction, engagement, flow experience and pleasure-driven activity are not goal-oriented, but motivated by the process)

The "text" of an interface is not a thing, stable and self-evident, whose meaning can be fixed simply by a detailed reading of its elements. An interface is a space in which a subject, not a user, is invoked. Interface is an enunciative system.

Can we conceive of models of interface34 that are genuine instruments for research? That are not merely queries within pre-set data that search and sort according to an immutable agenda? How can we imagine an interface that allows content modeling, intellectual argument, rhetorical engagement?

foreground ambiguity and uncertainty, unresolvable multiplicities in place of singularities and certainties. Sustained interpretative engagement, not efficient completion of tasks, would be the desired outcome.

ways to show the history of the rewritable substrate and expose the palimpsest of traces held in memory.

everything (called "web" in the menu bar)

Stanford’s site privileges the institutional identity of the researchers and their place within that specific project’s support

The very notion of "authorship" in Google is usefully problematic.

Create fragmented and correlated points of view that resist self-evident reification.

re-order familiar conventions

constellationary

Multiple imaging modes that create palimpsestic or parallax views of objects make it more difficult to imagine reading as an act of recovering truth, and render the interpretative act itself more visible.

More attention to acts of producing and less emphasis on product, the creation of an interface that is meant to expose and support the activity of interpretation, rather than to display finished forms, would be a good starting place.