Critical Interfaces Main Menu Introduction Critical Making 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

Interfaces in Hollywood

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By way of conclusion, the video essay on this page illustrates the potential value of the alternative vision of critical making presented in this article. This video essay presents an interpretive chronology of interface metaphors from Hollywood film and television dating back to 1950. By excerpting, thematizing, ordering and recombining these scenes from a disparate array of sources, my hope is to reveal the easily underutilized range of possible human-computer interactions in both real and fictional contexts. The roughly chronological structure of the video is meant to historicize the relationship between interfaces in Hollywood and their counterparts in the real world, illuminating the limits and presuppositions of naturalized ways of engaging with digital devices and information systems. The goal, in taking these scenes out of their diegetic context - an inversion of David Kirby's concept of the "diegetic prototype" - is to defamiliarize our vision of users’ basic modes of interacting with computers. Although it does not involve the physical manipulation of objects in space, I would argue that the software-based process of de-encrypting, selecting, and recombining scenes from films and TV shows may be properly regarded as a process of critical making. I realize this use of the term "critical making" may run afoul of commonly accepted definitions, but I believe the tortured history of copyright and fair use in media studies warrants such an extension. Put bluntly, media studies has been too long deprived of the basic ability to quote from media sources – especially in the realm of electronic publishing – and it is only with the recent expansion of fair use and the validation of video essays as a critical form that this has begun to be remedied.

The Critical Interfaces video essay offers an interpretive chronology of Hollywood’s imaginings of computer interfaces since the earliest days of computing. Although not rigidly chronological, the project observes a historical evolution from the earliest visions of gestural interfaces in the 1950s when computer technologies were linked with super-human or extra-terrestrial intelligence, to the highly literal, physical and punch-card based interfaces of the mainframe era, followed by a wave of strangely recalcitrant voice and anthropomorphic interfaces during the PC era that suggests a profound transformation of the relationship between humans and computers, as we become increasingly dependent on computation in our daily lives. The chronology comes full circle with a return to gestural and embodied interfaces and non-screen-based displays in the 2010s. However, unlike their imaginary, post-war counterparts, Hollywood's second wave of gestural interfaces are closely tied to real world technology development and product placement. The essay concludes with a call for more thoughtful visions of technology in Hollywood design fictions and a celebration of the comparatively indigestible work of Canadian David Cronenberg. Without suggesting a deterministic relationship between the cinematic imaginary and real world technology design, the essay invites a critical vision of interfaces - both on screen and in relation to consumer culture.

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  1. Critical Interfaces Steve Anderson

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