Buttons and Bubbles
Olia Lialina
Open Project
The graphical computer interface offers its users representations of
functions, communicative acts, structures, available options or
currently happening operations, giving a "face" to otherwise
invisible procedures.While interface culture developed a strong language of icons, pointers, handlers, cursors and clear instructions, the duties it has to fulfil became much more over the years. The graphical user interface is used to express futurism, playfulness, efficiency, a sense of security, familiarity, criminal acts, taste, individualism, professionalism, authenticity and much more.
So is the GUI fit for the future? Can and should it serve all these purposes?
The semester's work will start with an overview of interface challenges and trends of different times. We will look at specific elements of Human Computer Interaction and how they changed or stabilized over the years.
Different times and environments brought along different problems and different solutions, metaphors and symbols.
Students are supposed to improve their screen design and interface critique skills. Learn to read and write the interface culture!
"Buttons and Bubbles" is also the working title of the exhibition we are going to build up in the end of the semester.
It will consist of interactive, screen and printed works dealing with historic, nostalgic, critical or futuristic views on the topic. It should play with current interface metaphors and suggest new ones.
Wolfgang Münch, Kiyoshi Furukawa,
Bubbles, 2000
Gebhard Sengmüller,
Very Slow Scan Television, 2005
Himanshu Khatri,
Water Bubble Display, 2005
Susan Kare, Icons for Macintosh, 1983-1984
Alexei Shulgin, Form Art, 1997
johannes p osterhoff, Star Bars, 2005
Artemij Lebedev, OrbiculusThumbtacks, 2006
O. Lialina / D. Espenschied,
With Elements of Web 2.0, 2006
Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, 1962
Meredith Bricken, Virtual Worlds, No Interface to Design, 1991
Steven Johnson, Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate, 1997
Neal Stephenson, At the beginning ... was the command line, 1999
Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2001
David Bolter and Diane Gromala Windows and Mirrors : Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, 2005
Edward R. Tufte, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint Pitching Out Corrupts Within Second Edition, 2005
Lev Manovich, Friendly Alien: Object and Interface, 2006
very recent works related
BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ
David Byrne, PowerPoint Art
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/rave.html?pg=4&topic=&topic_set= http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/03/08_byrne.shtml
visual id icons Dialog05 Universal connections
Justin Strawhand, Desktop Portraits
