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In the final paragraph re the interface as a highly subjective channel think the way you have written this is kind of problematic for me in that it suggests that there is one 'real' reality that interfaces mediate to different degrees of distortion. I see interfaces and our engagement with them as shaping reality--producing it and constructing it through our different experiences rather than distorting a given reality.
by carey jewitt on 5/14/2003 at 10:23:59
Human skin is an interface, if the nervous system is seen as a user.
I'd say the nervous system _is_ the interface. The skin is the "surface" (as in "jie mian") like the fluorescent glass of the monitor screen. The nervous system facilitates the transition form external to internal information, translates outside data into internal experience. The real interface is of course the way our brain is "programmed"; skin/screen, wiring/nervous system, brain/software. In design terms, this gives an idea of a hierarchy of material and procedural aspects of making interfaces: sensing / transmitting / transforming.
Another reason why I say the nervous system is the interface, and not a user, is that it does not have a program in the sense a user has. A user has a question, a desire, an intention. The means with which he can formulate (communicate) that intention, so that it results in something that he might experience as a meaningful answer, is the interface...
by max bruinsma on 4/27/2003 at 08:21:31
Software vs. wetware, programs vs. people. Your writing makes me think about the new cues that we feel moving from software space to software space. Usually a time lapse, a change of available palettes that suggest activities, or menubar choices. It struck me when taking a bike ride earlier this week that there were similar cues that I felt when passing through different environments. A coolness that happened when moving down a hill, sudden smells I sensed before I saw the things that made them (cow farm). There is a sensory richness of a bike ride and its "soft cues" about location that's slowly being built into the virtual world.
by Glen Cummings on 4/16/2003 at 15:55:00
So what part of architecture isn't interface? Any? What about art?
by Simon Greenwold on 4/09/2003 at 17:04:24
