Critical Interfaces Main Menu Introduction Origins of Vectors Vectors as interface Digital and social engagement Case Studies: Stolen Time Archive and Totality for Kids Scalar Critical Commons Critical Commons + Scalar Conclusion Works cited

Critical Making

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A significant subset of critical making orbits around the extension of computation into physical spaces and material objects - e.g., through fabrication, laser cutting, 3D scanning and printing, etc. Another strand focuses on physically dismantling and recombining physical objects, especially electronic circuits, sensors and input/output devices connected to the computer. In support of both of these clusters of activity, numerous institutions have responded by making “fab-labs,” collaboratories or maker spaces available to scholars and students not just in art and design, but in the humanities as well. Along with these institutional infrastructures, numerous theories have articulated the benefits of thinking/tinkering with things (giving rise to neologisms such as "thinkering" and "thingking") that are predicated on the direct connection between material and immaterial labor. A rich history of art and cultural practice is often cited as informing this work, including the Fluxus, Oulipo, Dada, and Situationist movements, each of which was predicated on an artistic-political response to the prevailing culture of a specific historical moment. In order to understand what is happening with contemporary efforts in critical making, it is likewise important to situate these activities in their historical context.

Part of the cultural moment in which these movements have emerged includes the creative visualization of emerging modes of interaction between humans and computers on film and television screens. For the purposes of this essay, I will consider the role of Hollywood in establishing many of the best-worn tropes of human-computer interaction (HCI), some of which have seeped off the screen and into real-world technology development. In turn, I will focus on the evolution of interface design in the development of selected platforms for digital authoring including the journal Vectors, the authoring platform Scalar (in which the present essay was created) and the public media archive Critical Commons, each of which I have contributed to as an editor, co-principle investigator and founder, respectively. My selection of these three platforms is not meant as self-aggrandizement so much as to take advantage of my intimate knowledge of their development during the past decade of dynamic changes in the emergence of digital humanities scholarship.

Interface has played an unevenly important role in the evolution of the digital humanities. This role has been partially shaped in relation to the evolution of computer interfaces on cinema and television, where a fictionalized design space serves as a conceptual testbed for imagining modes of interaction between humans and computers. This essay maps the trajectory of cinematic design fictions in relation to real world interface design, tying it to the evolution of display and presentation in the digital humanities. It is beyond the scope of this essay to attend to the parallel evolution of research tools within the digital humanities, where nuances of interface and user experience are less consistently foregrounded, in favor of an exclusive focus on publication and presentation contexts related to user interface and experience design.

The concept of “design fiction” (Bleecker 2009) and the "diegetic prototype" (Kirby 2011) allow us to view Hollywood cinema and television as a speculative laboratory for technological innovation in the real world. But this project is less interested in retracing the two-way relationship between the media and technology industries than in thinking about the role of interface as a manifestation of the increasingly entangled relationship between humans and computers. Underlying this article is the belief that Hollywood design fictions represent a space of creativity and imagination where the interests of designers and humanists may productively converge. The model of the "collaboratory" envisioned by Anne Balsamo urges designers to “take culture seriously,” respecting the particular contributions of humanists and technologists. Following Teresa De Lauretis, Andreas Huyssen, and Kathleen Woodward, Balsamo describes strategies for defining and expanding the "technological imagination" to embrace the values-driven goals of humanistic inquiry.
 

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  1. Introduction Steve Anderson
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