Layering and Separation

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 03.29.07

I don’t really have a lot of time to discuss this one – but the author rightly explores the issues with layout and massive amounts of complicated information. But that’s one of the brilliant advantages behind the web – the ability to compact and organize information in an efficient and interactive format! Drop down boxes, sorting queues, separation by pages, graphical interfaces, and heck even cooler concepts like wikis where people can rearrange information as much as they want to reach the format that the group concensus deems most easily understood! More on this one in class I imagine.

Envisioning Information

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 03.29.07

So for once I'm not out to argue with or dissect one of the readings - I just simply liked what the author exhibited in this one. They give numerous examples of macroscopic views that can be reduced to microscopic ones. I know everyone is instantly thinking of Google Earth, but what other interfaces might this be used for? Perhaps on a resume - have a collection of pictures floating or a mirage of words - and a click on any given one would zoom in to detail this section?

Or the Vietnam Memorial, which I never knew was organized in the fashion it is - how could one replicate that in a web interactive format? Perhaps a scroll-like looking strip of text on white background that wraps around something circular? So as you rotate it the text becomes clearer and straightened (not wrapped around)?

I usually enjoy these sorts of contemplations of redeploying data through new visual methods (in this case massive amounts of information organized so that they become accessible) but I always yearn to establish a way they could adapted to a web interactive format.

I spose Google Calendar is another example. You get a visual display of your week and can click on any given event to see the text details.

I don't know if I completely agree with the comment that "Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information." (51) Depending upon how information is collected and processed it could be confusing. If the data is not consistent, impartial, or otherwise inaccessible then no amount of good design in layout and distribution of this data can come to the rescue. We must pay attention to our data collection process as much as our organization and design.

The Anti-Sublime Ideal in Data Art

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 03.08.07
A response to Lev Manovich's work

I was generally finding this reading rather straight forward and unremarkable until page three. Here the author makes the claim (in reference to new methodologies of visualization representation and selection of dimensions) that “these new questions about data mapping are now as important as more traditional questions about the politics of media representation”. I couldn’t disagree more. The power dynamics inherent in the discrimination and the astronomical influence of the media on society are ten fold what any power disparities in choice and use of dimension could ever pray to be. You’ve got to be kidding me. How we choose to visualize WinAmp isn’t even comparable to racism, sexism, the television induced mass fear mentality of America, classism, the borg-like force of consumerism and unprecedented impacts of globalization. I actually find a preposterous statement like this downright offensive if not absurdly ignorant. The two power disparities are not comparable and I don’t believe that they run parallel at all. The fact of the matter is that data and people are not the same – what data we select and how we portray it is important, but not in the same realm of expressions of entire peoples, countries, and ethnicities. Data visualizations don’t cause wars or become the driving force behind religions or construct the in-group out-group basis of the web of social interactions as we know it. The representation of people – visually and otherwise – is not the same as the representation of data – visually or otherwise. Apples to Oranges my friends.

There’s a causal relationship at work here. The ‘old politics of media representation’ remain the foundation of the new ones. If a certain people or culture were not represented in the first place then they could not be subject to this sort of revolution of representation. The power dynamics, social stratification and institutionalized inequities put into place by sexism, religious persecution, slavery, anti-immigration laws, discrimination against mentally ill, retarded, or disabled people, ageism, and the whole anamorphous & regenerating Gordian knot of issues at play external to the US are still hard at work long before we reinterpret them. In my mind the two are therefore inseparable. Had we attended to some of the issues of disparity before entering into this digitally inspired redefining of the old world then we might have been able to make claims of a new more important set of power relationships. But we haven’t attended to those issues, those inequalities and those structures and as such will get to tackle them in whatever form they come in – be it in this world or the next.

Once I press past this fatally flawed initial assumption I do actually like some of the concepts the author constructs in the work. The idea of software that allows “the user to generate descriptions of this [original media structures] and to change this structure.”

So creating new conglomerations or stories comprised of media built out of the old forms of media – a sort of dynamic (animated and interactive) scrap books built not of pictures but of films, sounds, pictures, and spaces. That unto itself really is a considerable question – how does one visualize that?

Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 02.27.2007

I forgot to do this reading until today, and as such am just now quickly reading it and attempting to make sense of it.

In the first section Jameson proposes that we are in the midst of a 'mutation in built space itself' and that we humans who 'happen into this new space, have not kept pace with that evolution.' So does he then propose postmodern (how about you define that Mr. academic, everyone loves that phrase) architecture, buildings as objects, are changing, and their subjects, presumably people, are not. This strikes me as awfully backwards in regards to linear thinking - do people not induce change in archictecture? It's rather counter intuitive to propose that inannimate objects are mutating while living subjects are not.

How are our current day perceptions and worse equiped to view macroscopic change in architecture? I feel that perceptions given through google-maps and conceptual visualizations of the internet bring powerful tools of understanding to the table.

Jameson's explanation of the building doesn't seem to include any sort of illustration of mutation or historical comparative aspects - I fail to see how it is any more dynamic or cutting edge than its visitors, who are changing in every moment, every circumstance and every experience.

I do like many of the concepts the article visits, like attempts to see 'physical trajectories through buildings as virtual narratives or stories' - stories visitors can fill, complete, and weave with their bodies, movements, and energies. The integration of things like elevators, escalators, and guard rails/barriers add a sense of restriction and define movement, and yet I really don't see these as all that different from windows, doors, and walls. If anything else they could add just as many dimensions - the dialectic of freedom of movement as a story vs. dominated existence and access is interesting, but really just circumstantially constructed!

Technologies and archectural features all alter the spatial experience, but I fail to see how they mutate it faster or more so than humans do - the spaces we create go far beyond the physical world in their attributes and elements. A building does not have an agency enabled temporal nature unto itself - but the relationship a person has with it facilitates for this, does it not?

If there's to be any perpetually transformative space that's managed to outpace the development of the individual subject I'd point to the internet. The amalgam us mass represents manifestations of millions of beings, experiences, and conciousnesses. This space also transcends physical barriers and requires abstraction to comprehend, map, and even just begin to explore.

While Mr. Jameson seems to be on to something rather insightful, I feel he's trying to make an epic tale out of a mundane story.

Language of Dreams

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 02.13.2007

Interpretations

Wow, so I felt bad not having a lot to say about the last one, this is a whole new ballgame. I can't honestly find anything insightful, controversial or otherwise profound about this article. I mean okay it's interesting to see the interplay of language and and character use to form meaning in Japanese and Chinese, but how much do these relate to interface for a designer who intends to work with English? I can think of clever compositions like the flash project where sleep would evade the cursor to symbolize a meaning, but this doesn't seem all that accessible, practical or intuitive. Maybe I'm too pragmatic minded. In general I like the concept of rebus - and dream interpretation would be a wonderful study worth exploring - but do we really want to create web and computer interfaces that must be explored and interpreted like dreams? I guess this would be interactive art, certainly. I just don't think this way. Linguistics don't strike me as the fabric of interactive art.

Questions for Further Study

• Could ascii art (and yeah that 733t hAx0r crap) construct a sort of interactive art of typography/pictography? Maybe meaning out of the pictures constructed and also in the text that constructs the pictures themselves?


• Could someone construct a rather funny parody on symbols and interpretations? Maybe a political one?

Modern Hieroglyphs

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 02.13.2007

Interpretations

So I honestly didn't have much to say about this article. It makes light of the social construction that feeds into our creation of icons. I gather the big important key words in italics - positive, logical, consistency, reduction, and more. About the only portion I didn't agree with was the author's statement that the traditional figures for male and female were "loaded with cultural associations - 'public,' 'neutral,' 'modern.'" Having the male characters represent the 'norm' for people is a continuation of the male majority/domination tradition of our society. The male symbol shouldn't have any more reason to being the standard than the female. I do understand the need for consistency. The picture gets a little more complex - when you figure in the clothing as the primary identification tool for the gender of the figures. So are guys wearing kilts to use the women's room and women wearing pants to use the men's? I don't think these icons are neutral or modern.

Solutions

I propose a new standard - use of the male and female symbols. Some combination of the two could represent people (or perhaps a new symbol). Size could be used to represent various ages. I don't know if my proposal is completely practical, but I feel like it's less politically loaded and considerably more feminist than the current state of affairs.

Questions for Further Study

• Which leads me to my only real question about the work - do we have any other needs for new icons and pictograms? Would a new set be something required for our new age of expression full of equality and with references to increasingly abstract ideas like the internet? Do we have this set already with the icons on our computers?


• What ways can we creatively use icons and symbols in interface?

The Desktop

Jeff Ginger | Art Studio 444 | 02.06.07

Initial Impressions

I’m sure the rest of the class found this reading to be considerably more accessible… but I almost missed the theory and thought experiment basis of the other one (even if I didn’t agree with it!).  I wasn’t entirely sure if the analogy between Gothic architecture and the internet was the best of those one might select, but I later came to appreciate the comparison when the author placed in the context of personal vs. community spheres.  The author’s comment, “organized space implies not just a personal value system – as in the religious order of Gothic cathedrals – but also a type of community.  This is true of architecture and urban planning, and it is also true of interface design.” (62), intrigues me.  Our choices in metaphor and simulated interface environment make statements about our own values – both that of society as well as the individual designer.  This appeals to my social justice side – given that we have a certain population and type of person who generally constitute the makers of interface in computers and on the web – what happens if we introduce and include other excluded individuals and groups to this process?  Are our interfaces value-laden?  Could inequality be perpetuated on the web in the form of the interfaces we employ?

Discrimination in Interface

Obviously agism plays a role in this inequity – the young have keen vision and access and understand information in considerably different ways than the old.  The way we construct our interfaces is undoubtedly dominated by the young.  We also have websites designed largely around the educated and the rich – most internet users are of higher class (and can afford to buy things) and have been afforded better education.  Oddly enough the web still finds itself scattered with rather ignorant and lazy individuals who don’t embody or realize this intelligence and education.  I’ve long considered conducting a graduate research project on the racism, sexism, and homophobia present on large gaming networks like Battle.NET.  Given a veil to hide behind and an unlimited opportunity for continual definition and redefinition of identity intergroup conflicts and discrimination finds itself unleashed.  Despite being able to play a game with someone half way around the world it doesn’t mean you can better learn to understand them.  After taking a class on web accessibility I’ve also found that we design our interfaces and systems to be completely unusable by people with disabilities such as vision or hearing.  Indeed, Flash isn’t something a differently-abled person can easily use.

Metaphor and Spatial Interface

I enjoy the fact that this article argues for the necessity for metaphor – it more ponders the form new interfaces might take on as we become further removed from the original command line.  I never really placed a lot of thought into the genius behind the concept of the desktop and folder interface – learning it as a child I never really had to employ the metaphor to understand it – I just kind of absorbed it – which is why I think computers are so naturally intuitive to me.  That being said I have been significantly trained – the second I switch to a Mac I become 50% slower and find myself frustrated with the interface not matching the model that my muscular memory is so in tune to.

The paper becomes rather quickly dated when one gets to the section about three dimensional interface and spatial relations.  Programs like Adobe Atmosphere have taken this notion in different directions, and other applications, like SphereXP have attempted to reform the desktop interface around a totally three-dimensional model.  The author regards third person shooters as the first three dimensional environment beyond the desktop of significant nature – now we see thousands upon thousands of people work in cooperation or opposition in a multitude of massively multiplayer games.  These interfaces and 3D interaction environments take on many genres – from cooperation to development and evolution to strategy to on-going interactive narratives.  Indeed one of the biggest uses of World of WarCraft and other MMO’s is for social networking. Which leads to my next statement…

Web 2.0

The article seemed to be pondering the next generation in interface design and use – many experts argue it’s here.  The seamless bond between applications and internet/networking for use of a service is what most deem to be Web 2.0. Instant examples come to mind – iTunes, Facebook, Wikipedia – all of these are applications (music, social networking, dictionary) that benefit massively from their connection to the network of individuals using them.  All of them benefit from network effects (the more users, the more valuable they are), and stand to represent the ‘new’ computer interface as we know it today.  Interfaces aren’t just about accessing your computer anymore – they’re about the computer being a nexus to the group collective!  The internet was just the beginning of this…

Web 3.0

Some theorists argue that the next generation will be the power of the collective conscious present in the form of the internet.  As more and more people become a part of the web we find more and more accurate pictures representing the world.  Even the concept of the endless index that is Google is one of overwhelming power – we can predict social phenomena and understand social movements, organizations, and agency all from the view of the web – a rather universal view of things – largely agnostic to the traditional components of power and control seen in governments, religions, and more.

The Immediate Future of Interface

Since I’ve blabbered too much I’m going to just keep these predictions simple:

1. Dual Display.  It’s already in use.  Our generation is furiously multitasking obsessed – this is an absolutely natural evolution to complement our normal interface usage.


2. Web 2.0.  Computers are already considered synonymous with internet connection.  Soon all applications will be too.


3. 3D.  Maybe in the long term something like Minority Report – but 3D interfaces are already in use in Linux and other applications.


4. Mobility. Future interfaces will be designed with cell phone and alternative device (say Xbox or TV) users in mind - this means more modularity and new requirements for visual and spatial relations.


5. Social Computing.  I think more and more services and applications will be built around the group-think nature of the internet – drawing upon many minds – and giving an opportunity to assert your individuality in many more ways.  Communities come in many forms, I see more of them surfacing over the internet in the future.

The Impossibility of Interface

Jeff Ginger | Art 444 | 01.25.07

Initial Impressions

So I began this week’s reading a little baffled by the opening – the author makes some assumptions in his premise that I would have liked to question. I wasn’t quite sure that an interface would “reflect the physical properties of the interactors” so much as mimic socially constructed and perceived physical activity and physical properties assigned by the designer. This first impression, however, was based on a much more constrained interpretation of interface – I soon realized that I needed to suspend my preconceptions and grasp interface more in the form of an abstraction – instead of employing the instinctive operational definition (interface is what we see it as in real life).

Assumptions and Bridges

Taking the author’s initial definition as truth, the speculative (undetermined & postulated) typology (systematic organization of elements into types on the basis of shared attributes) seems to actually call out to another concept I’m a little more familiar with in Science and Technology Studies (STS).

The work seems to be indicating a sort material-semiotic oriented analysis of relations – using interface as the front. Effectively mapping relations that are simultaneously material (connections between objects) and semiotic (connections between concepts), this epistemology framework is diminutive of the well known Actor Network Theory familiar to STS.

Actor Network Theory contains the rather controversial assumptions about the agency of non-human and the representation of collectives as individual units. The author’s example of the prisoner control interface fits perfectly with this ideological framework.

Assaults and Criticism

I did find a point of contention with the author’s understanding of metaphor in interface. He has a point – interfaces have the potential of becoming so abstracted that they no longer resemble the physical real-world properties that would normally enact them – for instance the way a first person shooter is controlled (w for forward, space for jump, a mouse that controls where you head looks – none of that is intuitive), but there are plenty of progressive and continually dynamic interfaces that present permutations of metaphors we encounter in our lives. Heck the Nintendo Wii will do incredibly well just because of its use of metaphor in game interface and design! Take the drag and drop concept – both brutally helpful as well as intuitive – and with a dual-display setup is considerably more efficient than any file/tree parsing or searching operation.

Solutions and Alternatives

I also disagree with his premise of control. An alternative theory or proposal is that of Adaptive Engineering another Sociology concept actually researched by one of the professors here, Andy Pickering, in STS. Adaptive engineering presents a system not contingent on domination or control, and features an evolutionary temporal aspect. Adaptive Engineering operates under the premise of multiple actors who contribute to a creative or previously existent system (or, in this case, interface). These actors do not control or dominate the system, but instead introduce changes and observe how the system interacts. They receive feedback from the system and then ascertain a better method of introducing change for a symbiotic and beneficial relationship. Think of add adjustments to the flow of a river to redirect water supplies instead of building a giant dam and screwing up the entire eco system. In the case of interfaces, I think adaptive engineering in regards to metaphors is the better methodology when it comes to creating better interfaces. Instead of trying to dominate the user and constrain them to a less and less metaphorical interface, help to introduce changes with each new interface and see how the users react. By increasing the knowledge and education of the user as well as training them what to expect they improve –and at the same time their unintended or seemingly irrational interests and instincts then help to inform the interface designers of new ways to optimize their model. An additional step beyond this is the open source concept – where users are literally able to change the interface as they see fit – resulting in the sort of Wikipedia style truth – an aggregation of interests and perceptions creating the best fitted definition or model.

At root I think people need metaphors. In order to connect with and identify with interfaces they must be on some level intuitive and contextualized so that people may relate.

The Prisoner Scenario

The author’s model of interface here suggests that all actors in each tier are relatively equal within the network. It does not account for pre-existing power structures, but instead sees these structures as emerging from the actions of actors within the network. Beyond this while highly descriptive, his interface lens (method of viewing the situation) doesn’t solve the problem or enhance our understanding.

Sentience

The interface abstraction employing humans as components is plagued with issues of sentience – what makes us human can differentiate us from a conceptualized construct or interface comprised of the inanimate or non-sentient (machines, animals). I won’t expound on my definitions of sentience here.

Terms?

The author references the Double Consciousness, an idea in Sociology proposed by DuBois as well as Alientation, a concept first pioneered by Marx in ways I’ve never seen before. Neither development of the terms fits the oodles of material I’ve been exposed to about them. With a little footwork Marxist ideology alienation can easily apply to the bakers.

Wrapping…

I found more discrepancies in the work, but I imagine I’ve already over-run the requirements here with my less than organized bantering, I look forward to hearing explanations in class!

Questions

• How can we divorce the metaphor from interface if technology (application of science within a social or cultural context) is socially constructed?


• Are other approaches of analysis appropriate? Conflict, network analysis, collective conscience, an aggregation of individual perspectives?


• Is the proposed reductionist progressive interface outlook imply a deterministic one?