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Christoph Ernst, Timo Kaerlein and Sabine Wirth: Introduction – Special Section: Interfaces as Experimental Arrangements, Interface Critique, Nr. 4 (2023): Diagrammatic Operations

“Testing – and crucially: experimentally intervening by tweaking the environmental settings – becomes a feature of everyday life when people routinely interact with ‘smart’ devices and data-intensive media technologies that capture data about their use for constant interpretation and adaptation.”, Interface Critique, Nr. 4 (2023): Diagrammatic Operations

This chapter focuses on Syrian refugee women as data subjects in the bureaucratic system of the Dutch immigration services (IND). In an increasingly datafied society many aspects of governance are becoming subject to some form of datafication. The same goes for the decision-making process of the immigration services. Recent research on these processes has mainly focussed on data practices by the European Union in order to protect "Fortress Europe" or use by Syrian refugees themselves of social media and telephone. Media and social research on immigration practices has mainly focussed on inequality and the representation of refugees, in society, in policy-making and in the process of integration. This chapter combines a top-down perspective (data system) with a bottom-up perspective (data subjects) on the IND’s data system by integrating an analysis of data and information about Syrian refugee women present in the IND system with the experiences of the women that provided the information. The result is a moving as well as very informative collection of responses, experiences and insights of five Syrian women refugee women who are in, or have been through the IND’s decision-making process and who speak back to the system, producing alternative knowledge and representations to the dominant and mainstream stories of migration and integration in the Netherlands.

Ökologische Krisen und Ökologien der Kritik – Medien – Wissen – Bildung

The following four essays are based on a workshop of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) working group on Interfaces that took place during the annual conference of the GfM at the university of Siegen in September 2018., Interface critique, Nr. 2 (2019): Navigating the Human

Often against their own intentions, the pioneers of human-compu- ter interaction nd themselves at the forefront of the development of entirely new ways to control and programme the productivity of an increasingly mobile and exible workforce., Interface critique, Nr. 2 (2019): Navigating the Human

Der Beitrag adressiert eine aktuelle Rhetorik in Marketing und Design persönlicher Informationstechnologien, die sich im Schlagwort des intimate computing verdichtet. Dazu wird zunächst die Geschichte der Formation eines intimate computing im Umfeld medienpädagogischer Arbeiten an sogenannten personal dynamic media im Xerox PARC der 1970er Jahre rekonstruiert. Über einige Zwischenstufen in computerwissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekten werden die Konnotationen von intimate computing bis in die gegenwärtige Konsumelektronik verfolgt. Die Nachzeichnung verschiedener historischer Verwendungskontexte des Leitbilds intimate computing kann dabei helfen, gegenwärtig dominante strategische Einsätze in ihrer Kontingenz zu markieren und die Perspektive für alternative Besetzungen zu öffnen., The contribution addresses a current rhetoric in the marketing and design of personal information technologies, which is summarized in the slogan of intimate computing. To do so, the essay reconstructs the history of the concept of intimate computing in the field of media education and the research towards so-called personal dynamic media at Xerox PARC during the 1970s. The essay then follows the connotative shifts within intimate computing, discussing several intermediate steps in various research projects in computer science, on their way to present-day consumer electronics products. Tracing the diverse historical contexts of intimate computing imagery may help in marking contemporary applications of the term as contingent, and open up possibilities for alternative interpretations.

The paper addresses prospects of Japanese mobile telepresence robotics where small anthropomorphic devices are designed to act as intermediaries between remote interlocutors. First, an emic perspective of involved scientists and engineers is presented, focusing on example technologies being developed at the Hiroshi Ishiguro Lab in Kyoto (Japan), particularly a „cellphone-type tele-operated android [...] transmitting human presence“ called Elfoid. It represents an attempt to get “behind the veil of the machine” (Sekiguchi/Inami/Tachi 2001, about their RobotPHONE prototype which uses a similar concept) in that it is supposed to act as a solid substitute for a dialog partner through evoking a feeling of presence (sonzaikan in Japanese philosophy, the feeling that someone is sharing the same physical space). In such undertakings, specific utopian ideals of communication become apparent. Paradoxically, the high-tech developments aim at constituting seemingly immediate interactions, preferably bypassing any potentially troublesome interface. The existence of a phantasm of immediacy (Bolter/Grusin 2000) can be traced back to decisive moments in media history and belongs to the central promises of new technological interfaces. Interestingly, the engineers’ statements reveal a latent technophobia, an ambition to overcome the limitations of physical devices altogether and to move on to more direct means of communicative exchange (including the mythical dimension of telepathy). Two questions are of particular concern: 1. On what different levels does the notion of immediacy operate? Not only does it refer to a spiritual ideal of unmediated communion, but it also influences practical decisions in interface design. “Natural” and “Tangible” User Interfaces are the result of a practice of disguise in that they mask their factual hypermediacy to allow for a seamless knotting up of real and mediated environments. 2. What is the relationship between media and the immediate? The concept of immediacy has so far been met with an almost univocal intellectualist disdain on the part of media theorists. The reason for this rejection is simple enough: If one takes ideas of immediacy serious, the self-image of a whole field of study is called into question. The paper thus attempts to provide a contribution to the question of how media build on notions of immediacy. Any theoretical attempt at describing their operations should take into account the intricate relationship between media and the immediate.

Die Bildstrecke präsentiert Screenshots sogenannter Hauls und Unboxing-Videos, die sich seit einigen Jahren auf YouTube verbreiten. Darin präsentieren KonsumentInnen ihre Einkäufe und kommentieren die Qualität der erworbenen Produkte. Es handelt sich um ein Genre, das sich irgendwo zwischen Teleshopping-Kanal und Amateur-Videoblog bewegt. Mit der Präsentation dieser Bilder wirft die Bildstrecke schließlich Fragen auf, unter anderem: Wem gehören diese Bilder? Sind die VloggerInnen DarstellerInnen oder AutorInnen ihrer Selbstrepräsentationen – oder beides?