Interface Working Session

One of the aims of PIPES_BCN is the creation of a Critical Interface Manifesto. Our research team is currently working on it and on November 18th a collective work session took place in which some of the key concepts of the future Critical Interface Manifesto were shared and discussed.

Many of these ideas we are working with come from the reference bibliography that we have been reading like “Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond the Buttons” (Christian Ulrik Andersen, Soren Bro Pold), “the Interface effect” (Alexander Galloway) or “Evil Media” (Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey) to name just a few.

The methodology that we followed within this framework was to display a brainstorming session in which every participant would contribute with three statements that could be part of an Interface Manifesto. We tried to organize some of these shared ideas and the result was a compilation of statements that summarize some controversial concepts crossing the interface conceptualization such as transparency, symmetry, collaboration, openness, ownership, etc.

During this working session other issues were discussed. First we look over the aims of the manifesto trying to answer some very basic questions like why should we focus and produce a manifesto, or how can we contribute to this field and who will be its target.

We also focused on questions related with the formal aspects of the manifesto that posed some dilemmas such as: should we strive for simplicity and clarity or rather should we try to be creative and poetic? or, should  the Manifesto itself  be an interface? and if yes, how can we design a coherent Manifesto so it can contain its ideology embedded on its own interface?