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© 2011-2018 Martina Huynh
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Interface Politics (short version) In the physical space we can influence our surroundings, apply force, move things around. We have a degree of agency over our environment. When browsing the web, that is not necessarily the case. Most interaction is mediated through a designed interface that reduces our bodies to fingers as actuators, and eyes as receivers. Digital interfaces form the bridges allowing for interaction between the physical and the virtual space. Apart from determining the interaction itself - be it rubbing a finger against a smooth screen, tapping on a keyboard or mouse, or waving ones arms around in mid-air - interfaces play a key role in defining the way the ‚user‘ relates to the digital processes within the virtual space. But who determines what contents and structures an interface allows the user to ‚grasp‘, and what stays hidden behind the smooth and shiny surface, because no buttons or other access points were put in place? When we consider digital spaces as part of our living environments, they often appear as strictly regulated spaces, as every visitor’s range of possible actions is pre-programmed, leaving little room for the user to deviate from default paths and behaviors. As we are generally considered users, at the receiving end of a service, that is understandable. Just like we are to comply with certain rules when entering private properties in real life (shops, restaurants, someone else’s home). Yet some digital services have become so essential in our day to day lives, they can almost be considered a digital infrastructure many of us have become increasingly reliant on (ie. search engines, real-time maps etc.) And although some of these affect a citizen’s daily life nearly as much as other physical city infrastructure (traffic, electricity, public space), we as citizens have surprisingly little say in shaping them or what their terms & conditions are - when in usual situations we have a democratic say in the systems facilitating the smooth functioning of our daily lives. Today we often see web interfaces leaving concepts like cookies, trackers and data mining as a banner to either agree to or walk away from. They are designed to stay abstract and hard to negotiate with. And even though the more tech-savvy of us have their ways of circumventing data collection or censorship, these methods remain difficult to access or unintuitive to many. Merging digital defense mechanisms with routine gestures makes them more accessible and intuitive for us to counteract. An example being treating the trackers that you have unknowingly gathered as dust or dirt that has fallen on the monitor over time that needs to be wiped away once in a while. Augmented Mundanity OS plays with simple analog-digital analogies and is only a start in reclaiming agency and autonomy in the networked space. Since the way we live with prevalent technologies today is not a natural given it’s time to experiment with what alternative technologies could feel like, were they designed with the interest of citizens in mind. What would democratic technologies look like? How would people want technology to work for them? And would bottom-up grassroots alternatives be more interesting or top-down democratic governmental decisions and regulations, supposedly by installing a „Ministry of Network Space“ next to existing Ministries of Education / Sports / Traffic? In times when digital services shape our physical spaces and economies ever more (ie. airbnb, uber etc.), when even physical city infrastructure begin to see their citizens as „users“: discussing sovereignty of the user when living in/with technology-mediated environments becomes ever more urgent.
Martina Huynh
Projects
Augmented Mundanity OS Set up as an interactive installation, the Augmented Mundanity OS offers an alternative approach to common digital interfaces by allowing the citizen-user to directly take action on digital processes i.e, clearing one’s cache and cookies when wiping the screen with a cloth, switching to TOR browser for anonymous web browsing as soon as the curtains are closed, causing your personal assistant AI to glitch when insulting it and more. Linking existing, digital defense mechanisms to routine physical actions expands our influence to the networked environment, therefore rendering the space more accessible and enabling a different approach to the politics behind human-computer-interfaces.
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Augmented Mundanity OS Set up as an interactive installation, the Augmented Mundanity OS starter kit offers an alternative approach to common digital interfaces by allowing the citizen-user directly take action on digital processes i.e, clearing one’s cache and cookies when wiping the screen with a cloth, switching to TOR browser for anonymous web browsing as soon as the curtains are closed, causing your personal assistant AI to glitch when insulting it and more. Linking existing, digital defense mechanisms to routine physical actions expands our influence to the networked environment, therefore rendering the space more accessible and enabling a different approach to the politics behind human-computer-interfaces.
Interface Politics (short version) In the physical space we can influence our surroundings, apply force, move things around. We have a degree of agency over our environment. When browsing the web, that is not necessarily the case. Most interaction is mediated through a designed interface that reduces our bodies to fingers as actuators, and eyes as receivers. Digital interfaces form the bridges allowing for interaction between the physical and the virtual space. Apart from determining the interaction itself - be it rubbing a finger against a smooth screen, tapping on a keyboard or mouse, or waving ones arms around in mid-air - interfaces play a key role in defining the way the ‚user‘ relates to the digital processes within the virtual space. But who determines what contents and structures an interface allows the user to ‚grasp‘, and what stays hidden behind the smooth and shiny surface, because no buttons or other access points were put in place? When we consider digital spaces as part of our living environments, they often appear as strictly regulated spaces, as every visitor’s range of possible actions is pre-programmed, leaving little room for the user to deviate from default paths and behaviors. As we are generally considered users, at the receiving end of a service, that is understandable. Just like we are to comply with certain rules when entering private properties in real life (shops, restaurants, someone else’s home). Yet some digital services have become so essential in our day to day lives, they can almost be considered a digital infrastructure many of us have become increasingly reliant on (ie. search engines, real-time maps etc.) And although some of these affect a citizen’s daily life nearly as much as other physical city infrastructure (traffic, electricity, public space), we as citizens have surprisingly little say in shaping them or what their terms & conditions are - when in usual situations we have a democratic say in the systems facilitating the smooth functioning of our daily lives. Today we often see web interfaces leaving concepts like cookies, trackers and data mining as a banner to either agree to or walk away from. They are designed to stay abstract and hard to negotiate with. And even though the more tech-savvy of us have their ways of circumventing data collection or censorship, these methods remain difficult to access or unintuitive to many. Merging digital defense mechanisms with routine gestures makes them more accessible and intuitive for us to counteract. An example being treating the trackers that you have unknowingly gathered as dust or dirt that has fallen on the monitor over time that needs to be wiped away once in a while. Augmented Mundanity OS plays with simple analog-digital analogies and is only a start in reclaiming agency and autonomy in the networked space. Since the way we live with prevalent technologies today is not a natural given it’s time to experiment with what alternative technologies could feel like, were they designed with the interest of citizens in mind. What would democratic technologies look like? How would people want technology to work for them? And would bottom-up grassroots alternatives be more interesting or top-down democratic governmental decisions and regulations, supposedly by installing a „Ministry of Network Space“ next to existing Ministries of Education / Sports / Traffic? In times when digital services shape our physical spaces and economies ever more (ie. airbnb, uber etc.), when even physical city infrastructure begin to see their citizens as „users“: discussing sovereignty of the user when living in/with technology-mediated environments becomes ever more urgent.
Martina Huynh
Contact
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