Category: 05-CriticalInterface

After reading the Critical Interface Manifesto by the Spanish HANGAR collective, I chose the following tenet:

La interfaz se da en el pliegue entre el espacio y el tiempo; es dispositivo y situación simultáneamente. Es render (actualiza condiciones pensadas) y emergencia (ensambla algo nuevo). The interface exists in the crease between space and time; it is a device and simultaneously a situation. It is rendered (updated under thoughtful conditions) and emergent (joining into something new).

• Try to delay your interaction with the interface by counting to 10 before clicking. Count to 100. Wait an hour, a day. (1+cH)

• Invite yourself to act and perform in a different way. Imagine a different gender, age, location, character, social position for 20 minutes every day. Review how the render changes. (1+cH)

• Delay answers, read twice, imagine impact. (1+cH)

I found this tenet particularly interesting, as it allowed me to reflect on what an interface is supposed to do, and envisioned this in the context of using the internet as the interface. With such advanced detection and adaptability in today’s modern search engine, the search engine interface tracks and adjusts to your typing behavior and sets up this world for you. The whole idea behind an interface is to bridge the gap between what is real and what isn’t real, and to make an interface that is invisible means adapting and adjusting perfectly to the user’s expectations; to create a fake and reality, like a simulation or situation.

I found this intersting in the line where it suggests and idea of performing in a different way, and seeing how the search engine reacts to that decision. I think it’s sometimes amusing how accurate and how observant the search engine could be, whether it recommends something which you just thought about or just looked over again a couple minutes after searching. As stated in the tenet, the interface is something which is rendered simultaneously, “off of thoughtful conditions”, where it adheres and transforms through time.

The idea behind “inviting” yourself to use the internet through the lenses and behavior in a different manner is an interesting yet creepy experiment I am interested on exploring. I want to find out to what extent can I transform my internet interface based off manipulating my age, gender, and social behavior?

I made the mistake of reading thoroughly through each of the axioms and the small prompts for each of them, which made it incredibly difficult in finding one single quote to expand on.

At last, I chose this one:

La interfaz acumula trazas: rastros y restos de todos los (ag)entes que confluyen en ella

“Ask someone you trust to collect all traces stored on his/her computer and do the same. Exchange files and describe a character that fits this information. Do the same with someone you don’t know”

This specific proposition is incredibly powerful to me because it has a certain applicability to the sort of questions I have been asking myself recently about what it means to be a person in a world that has surveillance so thoroughly ingrained in our day to day life. Today, in between going through this reading, I came across this tweet  and it really put into perspective just how pervasive the digital tracking and profiling of our identities comes into play. For one, many of our interactions with day to day websites will have some sort of trackers or ad trackers that either use scripts of code or literal images to profile your device for the sake of identifying you as a potential user or consumer. In a way, it is that “dystopian” future we often spoke about, where mass surveillance dominates our lives, and I often wonder how we look on the other side of the information conglomerates that own our interactions with the digital world. I don’t find this scary at all. How much of me as a person has become readily accessible and summarizable by the way my system interprets the pixels of an image? Is this bad? Should I revel in this and make myself as exposable as I can be or use only burner phones for the rest of my life? The idea of having an identity constructed by a set of identifiers that can be accessed in a sort of abstract way is something I have been considering, and I think with this I think a lot about who people become on the other side.

Critical Interface Manifesto

Tenet #4: “The interface collects traces: traces and remains of all agents/agencies which converge in it”
Provided propositions:
• “Swap computers with your partner for a week. Swap computers with a stranger for a day.”
• “Avoid synchronizing your devices…or you will be hunted and tracked down.”
• “Use your first Nokia 3210 phone again (try not to get too nostalgic about it).”
• “Become an Open Data Donor. Only give data deliberately and make sure it stays Open.”

I chose this tenet because it is so blatantly obvious, yet I don’t think we as a society stop and realize it/really care enough to think about. We are so connected to our devices that they have basically become a digital copy of ourselves and our identity. If you only see the interface without the user, you (as a third-party observer) can still reveal personality traits, identity characteristics of the user, and the other agents that have come across the interface. Through people’s applications, messages, personal photos, etc. – people’s traces and information are stored into the interface and has given that interface a collection of your identity. An example of this I think is really just our daily lives nowadays. I doubt the majority of us can live without our phones/computers for one day (me included). Our technology has become so significant in our lives to make us feel included into society, and we’ve lost touch with reality and society in a sense since we’ve depended on our devices for so long (i.e. not memorizing our address book and contact numbers, needing a GPS to move around a city instead of memorizing a city’s map, etc.) I just find it interesting that our interfaces have almost become ourselves, but has the capability to retain more knowledge about us than we can about ourselves.