Positive Technology Journal

From Networked Performance

The Aesthetic Interface :: 9-13 May 2007 :: Aarhus University, Denmark.

The interface is the primary cultural form of the digital age. Here the invisible technological dimensions of the computer are given form in order to meet human perception and agency. This encounter is enacted through aesthetic forms stemming not only from the functional domains and tools, but increasingly also from aesthetic traditions, the old media and from the new media aesthetics. This interplay takes place both in software interfaces, where aesthetic and cultural perspectives are gaining ground, in the digital arts and in our general technological culture - keywords range from experience oriented design and creative software to software studies, software art, new media, digital arts, techno culture and digital activism.

This conference will focus on how the encounter of the functional and the representational in the interface shapes contemporary art, aesthetics and culture. What are the dimensions of the aesthetic interface, what are the potentials, clashes and breakdowns? Which kinds of criticism, aesthetic praxes and forms of action are possible and necessary?

The conference is accompanied by an exhibition and workshops.

Christian Ulrik Andersen(DK): 'Writerly gaming' - social impact games
Inke Arns (DE): Transparency and Politics. On Spaces of the Political beyond the Visible, or: How transparency came to be the lead paradigm of the 21st century.

Morten Breinbjerg (DK): Music automata: the creative machine or how music and compositional practices is modelled in software
Christophe Bruno (F): Collective hallucination and capitalism 2.0
Geoff Cox (UK): Means-End of Software
Florian Cramer (DE/NL): What is Interface Aesthetics?
Matthew Fuller (UK): The Computation of Space
Lone Koefoed Hansen (DK): The interface at the skin
Erkki Huhtamo (USA/Fin): Multiple Screens - Intercultural Approaches to Screen Practice(s)
Jacob Lillemose (DK): Interfacing the Interfaces of Free Software. X-devian: The New Technologies to the People System
Henrik Kaare Nielsen (DK): The Interface and the Public Sphere
Søren Pold (DK): Interface Perception
Bodil Marie Thomsen (DK): The Haptic Interface
Jacob Wamberg (DK): Interface/Interlace, Or Is Telepresence Teleological?

Organised by: The Aesthetics of Interface Culture, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, TEKNE, Aarhus Kunstbygning, The Doctoral School in Arts and Aesthetics, .

Supported by: The Danish Research Council for the Humanities, The Aarhus University Research Foundation, The Doctoral School in Arts and Aesthetics, Aarhus University's Research Focus on the Knowledge Society, Region Midtjylland, Aarhus Kommune. The exhibition is supported by:Region Midtjylland, Århus Kommunes kulturpulje, Kunststyrelsen, Den Spanske Ambassade, Egetæpper.