Digital arts and technology studies
Andrea Giomi, Temporary Lecturer, Digital Arts and technologies, Univ. Gustave Eiffel, Paris, France
As an artist-researcher in the arts and technologies, I became interested very early on in the notion of interface. A vast and dynamic concept, it has been as useful to me in my practice with interactive systems as it has been in my theoretical reflection on the body. In particular, this notion has allowed me to question the manner by which digital technologies affect our kinesthetic and sensorial relationship with the world. It is to this notion of interface that I, in effect, consecrated a chapter of my doctoral thesis, as well as several courses at the Brera Academy of fine arts in Milan and a portion of my post-doctoral research at the Université Grenoble Alpes (Performance Lab). These research projects have permitted me to interpret interface as a conceptual apparatus acidulating three complementary dimensions: technical, aesthetic, and epistemological.
This term, whose development goes hand in hand with the diffusion of information and communication technologies, has now asserted itself into the debate of every discipline involving new technologies, such as design, communication, human-machine interaction, and the arts. However, the paradigm of the interface has recently gained currency in other fields of humanities, for instance geography, due to its conceptual importance. In my research, I have noted three principal usages of the term. The first usage, instrumental, possibly the most widespread, makes reference to the idea of interface as a physical device – such as a mobile phone or tablet – permitting us to “interface with each other” through the world of networks. This definition comes from the world of design and from the rising commercialization of new user-centered products. The second usage, semiotic, principally circulated within computer science communities, considers interface as a communication protocol that allows for interoperability between two systems. That is the case, for example, of a computer code or of a graphic interface. Finally, the third usage, functional or qualitative, which considers interface as a zone, a membrane, a filter, or a threshold, permitting the exchange of information and, more precisely, the transformation of that information from one system to the other. This last definition, certainly the most fruitful for the arts, underlines the fact that interface, as an apparatus is never neutral. Much to the contrary, each interface transforms its conveyed content and modifies our perception of the world by means of its sensory grid which in turn carries a certain ideology, a certain narration, a certain ontology.
As I have highlighted, the concept of interface as a dynamic notion deserves constantly renewed analysis. Concerting artistic practice, there are two approaches that I find particularly fruitful. On one hand, there is the matter of considering interface as a sensorial environment in which we are immerged. In my opinion, this makes it possible to consider a truly ecological relationship with processes of societal, economic, and affective transformation brought about by digital affordances. On the other, it appears necessary to practice a systemic reappropriation of the interface, with the goal of detaching it from its instrumental finality in order to make it into a creative, playful, unproductive, and perhaps critical apparatus.
More from this author:
Andrea Giomi, “Towards an Ontology of Digital Arts. Media Environments, Interactive Processes and Effects of Presence”, Rivista di Estetica : New Ontologies of Art, 1, 2020, pp.47-65 [online]: https://journals.openedition.org/estetica/6715 (03/11/21)
Cite this item: Andrea Giomi, “Interface”, translated by Lauren Fabrizio, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177561
