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Thesis Essay
(April 11, 2003)
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In a typical match, two opposing parties compete with each other through an interface. Take ball games, for example. First, there is the thing between the players--the net or the ball. When we say A beat B, we don't mean that A literally hit B. Rather, it's often about A sending the ball that B fails to receive or stop. Second, there is the space similar to the theatrical stage defining the boundary between the players and the audience--for example, the court. The art piece Stadium created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan--an enormously lengthened foosball game played by two teams of eleven players--is an example of incorporating two forms of interface.

Human skin is an interface, if the nervous system is seen as a user. It is "connected to our bodies yet also alien, marking the exterior, the end of ourselves" (Lupton 31). "Blushing, blanching, sweating--like the eyes and the mouth, skin is also a medium, a means of communication" (Diller 108). On the other hand, our skin has all those invisible buttons, links and rollovers to receive signals. In reflexology, curing a headache or arousing an appetite is sometimes just a click away on your feet.

Architecture can also be seen as an interface. Inside or outside, it's essentially a series of borders and surfaces. For example, Luis Barragan's convent in Tlalpan, Mexico, includes a corridor with a wall of yellow squares. When light passes through the wall, it creates the illusion of sunlight, even on a cloudy day.

Have you ever been confused by a person's sudden laughter on the street and then realized that he or she was engrossed in a cell phone conversation? The interface has become a highly subjective channel to a world that only the user can sense. It can be a piece of glass that represents, a lens that alters, or even a drug that distorts the world for you.

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