Distelmeyer, Jan (2018) “Drawing Connections How Interfaces Matter” Interface Critique Journal, Vol. 1.
Distelmeyer argues for several kinds of interventions and complications of how we understand "interface" in media studies. Though he doesn't provide any single concrete way of complicating interface, he usefully opens up multiple lines of inquiry through which scholars have to complicate their uses of "interface". His general interventions seem to be an insistence on working against interface as a monolithic or isolated object.
I found his historical rooting of the word "interface" to meanings of transmission of energy to be compelling, particularly as I think about recent theorizations of "interface" and "media" as more process-based concepts. Relative to this scholarship, it seems that Distelmeyer is also insisting on understanding "interface" as always being implicating in multiple networks of interactivity at any moment. However, it's a bit more difficult to say whether he would go so far as to say that everything is an interface or a medium. Unlike the new materialists who might lean more towards that claim, I'm not sure he's really thinking too deeply about non-technical materials as potential interfaces (of course, I might have gathered this impression because of my reading of the piece as opening multiple lines of inquiry rather than just focusing down on a single intervention).
I was also interested in his understanding of interfaces as having to potential to mediate various levels of access to various kinds of environments. This is based in how the interface is often implicated in ways that processes (infrastructure, governmental, life processes, etc.) become visibilized or invisibilized to various extents. This line of thinking is very fruitful for bringing interface studies or HCI into discussions of infrastructure studies and biopolitics.
Löwgren, Jonas and Eric Stolterman (2007) “Chapter 2: The Process” In Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
I reacted quite critically to the Lowgren and Stolterman text. In all of my projects, I've always struggled with articulating a methodology for theory-praxis work. The frustration carries on when I examine other theory-praxis works as well. About a year ago, I concluded that this frustration exists because the methods employed under theory-praxis are missing something significant: an engagement with arts practice history. (So, we should be thinking in terms of theory-history-praxis, rather than just theory-praxis.)
As I read this text, I was hoping to find some validation for my hypothesis. Of course, I didn't quite find what I was looking for. Rather, I found a very formalist understanding of a design process being explained. There were a couple of points where I lingered in slight appreciation, such as the concession that design doesn't start from a blank slate, and the conclusion that the design process itself is as significant as the end result (if not more so). Yet, I still found that this explanation of a design process was a bit too broad sweeping, even after the concessions towards the end about things changing in specific contexts.
Contrary to this text, I find myself insisting that design begins with a rigorous engagement in contingent histories of arts practice (including potentially "non-legitimate" and "low" art forms). Such practices are not always engaged with the satisfaction of a client. Importantly, some of these practices speak to a specific kind of ethos as praxis - a way of being in the world that is positioned as a political intervention. Strong design approaches simply must engage with practices that came before.
MacCormick, John (2012) “Pattern Recognition: Learning From Experience” 9 Algorithms that Changed the Future: the Ingenious Ideas that Drive Today’s Computers. Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Admittedly, I didn't follow every part of this chapter (particularly the part about neurotransmitters), but the text did spark a few thoughts on pattern recognition. First, I think it's enough to pause on what it means for humans to "teach" a computer pattern recognition. We could ask several questions here alone: what constitutes a pattern for humans generally? Is it even productive to think about patterns recognized by a general human population? Shouldn't the recognition of patters be contingent upon the usual time, space, and history qualifications (ex. a pattern that is recognizable in Flint, Michigan might not be recognizable in San Francisco, California)?
As far as I can tell, training computers to recognize patterns is a form of data aggregation - a way of analyzing a large dataset as a whole. For example, a dataset of facial images might be aggregated through the recognition of a pattern indicating a valid or normative face. Could we say that pattern recognition then has limitations similar to data aggregation? The similar problem I have in mind is that they both have a tendency to over-generalize the data, erasing datapoints that indicate difference. Perhaps it would be more productive to think about computer (and human) behavior that learns to recognize difference as well as patterns?
Woletz, Julie (2018) “Interface of Immersive Media” Interface Critique Journal, Vol. 1.
I appreciated the bulk of the historical work on different understandings of immersion in this work. It's very helpful to think about how definitions of immersion have been understood based on changes in technological and political disposition through different points in history. I was particularly interested in the historicization of how immersion as a technical quality has been made to interact with the body in different ways.
However, I do feel that basing immersion upon the extent of movement and interaction of the body in an environment can get dangerous. How would you address the movement and interaction of different bodies - bodies that are only capable of certain degrees of movement and participation? Is the environment immersive and "real" for me if my gendered, racialized, and queered movement and participation are echoed back to me? Is the goal to mimic subjectivities or is the goal to intervene in those subjectivities somehow? This last question is particularly important for me, though I don't think this article was moving towards this question at all.
I was also interested in the discussion of regimes of vision, though I don't think the article went far enough into the political implications of such a concept. It's important to remember that vision is itself constructed and informed by various political ideologies. This would mean that we do not all share the same field of vision. Therefore, I'm left wondering how "immersive" technologies address those different fields of vision. Similar to the question above, I have to ask if immersive technologies aim to mimic those different fields of vision, or if they attempt to intervene in those different visions? Either could be problematic…
I appreciate your insistence on taking history into account.