Die zweite Ausgabe des OA-Journals Interface Critique ist soeben erschienen! Darin findet sich auch eine aus den Reihen der AG entstandene ‚Special Section‘ zum Thema „Interface and the Post-Industrial Society“
“What kinds of conceptual and artistic frameworks will help us understand the implications of our participation in the hybrid human-technical systems that have become essential to contemporary life in developed countries?”
This question raised by N. Katherine Hayles is not only central for her own current work, in which she offers a glimpse in her contribution to the new issue of Interface Critique. It also reflects a main aspect of the issue’s focus: Calling up on the hybridity or interdependency of humans and technology, it criticizes tech ideologies and Californian Narratives which share a premise of “human engineering” –to refer to a term already used in 1965 by K. F. Hywel Murrell, one of the founders of research in human-machine ergonomics. From this perspective, current buzz words such as behavioural programming or persuasive technology uncover the powerful bias of research and development in ICT: its assumption that human behaviour in technological settings is something to be designed. The critical examination of such a concept of the human – as yet another systemic component – is the focus of this issue Navigating the Human. Rather than to be integrated as an element in functionalistic interface paradigms, the human factor in technology maybe conceptualised as resistant moments of subjectification. Since questions of subjective resistance are especially raised by contemporary critical artistic practice, this issue of Interface Critique also includes artistic contributions beyond classical scientificpaper formats. They are accompanied by contributions from media, art and cultural studies, philosophy, digital humanities or design theory, among other fields.
With contributions by Katriona Beales, Christoph Borbach, Filipa Cordeiro, Jan Distelmeyer, Christoph Ernst, Karl Wolfgang Flender, Masato Fukushima, Laurel Halo,N. Katherine Hayles,Julia Heldt, Darsha Hewitt, Timo Kaerlein, Armin Linke, Anthony Masure, Mari Matsutoya, Roland Meyer, Frieder Nake, Kalli Retzepi, Nils RöllerandWilliam Tunstall-Pedoe.