part of MA Critical Fashion Practices, ArtEZ
In this workshop we’re investigating familiar frameworks and using them for different purposes, experimenting with translating our perspectives and urgencies into practice.
what are we doing?
Points of entry, or questions to ask yourself might revolve around; the browser: how does it function as meeting space? How do we interact with it? or content: What am I seeing? What am I reading? Was it scraped, hunted or collected? or the terms & conditions: Is this a service? Who can participate? As a group we will be selecting one specific interface and repurpose, shift and remix these inputs to re-imagine the interactions we have with interfaces.
what is an interface?
“It is both the bottleneck through which all human relations to and through technology must pass, and a productive moment of encounter embedded and obscured within the use of technology. It is a disputed zone, a site of contestation between human beings and machines as much as between the social and the material, the political and the technological.” ⇆ B. Hookway
In the coming two days, we’re looking at “the interface” as a relation with technology, rather than as a technology in itself. In this relation the interface describes a boundary condition that is at the same time encountered and worked through toward some specific end. A connection? A purchase? A text? The interface can, at the same time, be regarded as translation, from something complex to something digestible. Digital interfaces and the ways they work as simulations, rely on emotional responses. ⇆ A. Grooten
According to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “Digital interfaces ought to give a ‘user’ the feeling of ‘mastery’ over their computer programs.[…] as interfaces seem to concretise our relation to invisible (or barely visible) “sources” and substructures.”⇆ W. Hui Kyong Chun
Here, ‘clean aesthetics’ tends to function as preoccupation and mystification. It hides all the processes that are needed for the interface to work, and for aesthetic information to be translated from one medium to another. We can think of the interface as a sort of connective tissue. And often to create a smooth translation, it tends to remove friction.
planning
thursday 21.11.2024
We unpack interfaces, their affordances, and think about the ways in which an interface can be seen as a relational object. Something that is active and creates an entry point for information, for practise and for discourse. We take friction(less) design into account.
instructions
- We each pick a fashion related interface and deconstruct its affordances, its drivers, its social meaning & context.
- From this list of possible investigations, we pick one focus: describe it, share it and reflect on it.
- We determine what we’d like to change or hack about it and why. We take this with us to the next day and start to think about how we might go about this. ↬ dont forget to document your process -- make pictures, screenshotes, notes, whatever helps to make way of working (&thinking) visible
friday 22.11.2024 : online[!!!]
We start with a guest-lecture by Enzo Aït Kaci on fashion-related interfacing and remediation.
Afterwards, we build on our findings from the previous session; we experiment with rearranging and changing your chosen interface through either content or form. We think about the impact this change can have on the way someone relates to these interfaces through content and/or what they were initially designed for, we think about the aesthetic value and strategies that lie behind these affordances and think critically about why with what purpose wed like to change then and how that reflects or finds a way into that reflects or finds a way into your practice. Try to keep it close, not too general — only then can it generate input for your practice & overall assignment.
instructions
- Look closely at your chosen in interface and pick a focus; content or form.
- Experiment with this through; print, code, collage, mockup, visualisation, tools, scanning, crafting.
- Share & input session (with Enzo Aït Kaci)
[!] while traditionally people create offline and transpose their work to online, think about what it means to start digital first and physical second. - Give your work a title and present your remediated interface(-in-progress).
↬ Think about what you did and what methods you’ve used. Think about how you would publish it and how that might impact its relational value.
✼ log the process and outcome in your are.na channel [!!]
intervention(s)
Gaia
Mathilda
Sarah