The Interface Paradigm
Published by bharath haridas,
Body as an interface
We perceive through a sensory shell and we shape our immediate environment with the same exoskeleton of a body.
This act of affecting the environment and being conscious of it creates an instance of an interface.
This is our relationship with the natural world and our experience of being makes the interface invisible. Only disruptions exposes the nature of it. We seek disruptions, we seek parallel wolds and they all compete for degrees of immersions and distances, in relationship to our standard experience of being.
The Spectacle as an immersive interface
The olympics opening ceremony is an instance where multiple entities are co-ordinated to create large scale spectacles. Although the audience doesn’t get to directly affect this environment, it creates an immersive world. The participants and designer of the experience creates temporary interfaces of control exercised through instructions and design. These spectacles take large amounts of energy and are inherently rare experiences.
Virtual reality experiences aspires towards a similar promise of an immersive spectacular event, however with the current limitations they will exist as a parallel dimension limited to an uncanny resemblance to the real world. Eventually virtual reality might enable the creation of an olympic ceremony that could be manipulated in realtime,
Creating a Virtual Interface
If you are creating a world in virtual reality how would you go about controlling the elements ? We accomplish most of it through code. l opening ceremony was also programmed through a type of code. Where each entity participating in the event is given a set of instructions.
The interface of control and design is a mixture of direct manipulation and instructions through a layer of abstraction. On a virtual plane with a two dimensional screen we shape forms with input devices and other virtualized tools. These objects can accept characteristics and commands through a language. Could a vast virtual space be programmed through an interface with a different procedure of instruction, perhaps one where you could just walk up give the elements voice commands? With the tilt brush we are already seeing a possibility.
The interface is the intermediate tools that enable control. Augmented reality offers a possibility of turning any object into an interface of control when it is connected to a network.
A doorknob with a virtual number pad that only you can see. A wall paper surface in your home that controls the light sliders. You might be wearing glasses or contact lenses, an addition to our current exoskeleton to enable this instance. Wearing glasses is normalized, augmented glasses might appear in the recent future. Google glasses failed that promise, perhaps because it didn’t pass of as an ordinary pair of spectacles. neither will the hololens. Maybe they can be normalized on helmets.
A progression of relative loss and expansion.
A brief history - book
There is bound to be fatigue since we are already dealing with a lot of input at a given time of our waking life. Then on top of that there is the preoccupied mind.
The post-image lives on the surface of the eye, with glasses, contact lenses and perhaps retina implants.
There was a always a post-image that lived with the human alongside, or rather there was always an augmented layer. The layer from the human mind. Our reality was augmented since the birth of language. We have been dealing with labels, signifiers, signage and environmental noise.
Perhaps augmentation could clear the noise and distill whats most important to you instead of adding more to it. However the chaos of an immediate unpredictable environment would sufficiently complicate a seamless integration of a realtime selective modification of visual information. A possibility nonetheless, but perhaps more fictitious that imagined.
The post-image is the written word. Sound or the spoken word could have either been pre or post image.
That which arrived after image text. .
Sound becomes words becomes text.
With the rampant use of text, we see that it falls back into the realm of image, a part of a continuous stream of images that our eyes and minds can’t deal with separately. When text is combined with images to form a language we advance the possibilities of relaying more information.
That which arrived after text is the image and text format.
Then came the moving image. Each advancement being collapsed into the realm of general vision and image after repeated exposure and use.
Then came the moving image that can be directly manipulated.
Dynamic image systems that can be controlled and manipulated. A return to realtime manipulation of digital information but this time through an added layer of translation. An interface with fixed and abstracted form thats is a result of the accumulation of technological history.
With AR layer we see how the interface thins out further and lives directly on top of reality.
A collapse of mind and the immediate surrounding spaces.
Literature is virtual reality
Considering literature was functioning in a similar way all this while, but at an imaginary plane completely in one’s mind eye.
The mind’s eye has an interface mostly borrowed from what one can directly manipulate in the real world. We might not need a direct control of our immediate environment beyond what is possible at a physical dimension, it might not be even possible since most of it is not connected to the network in any way.
Words themselves are a combination of sound, image and experience. The way it transmits is through a moment of image to sound and then to a holistic image. What mixed reality interfaces can produce is immediate instances of poetry. A fleeting haiku or a hardcore pornographic bodyscape. Its the mind’s eye collapsing with our real eyes.
This enveloping simulacrum is a luxury no doubt, and most probably unnecessary, but seeing into the present from the future can be entertaining and be useful in many classes. Science fiction has shaped our imagination and our immediate reality.
Is there a need for text to appear on any other surface other than just a single plane , or do these words take significance when appearing elsewhere on cups, street signs, in an environment, on shelves at the super-market.
Graphic Novels
A dynamic graphic novel that lives on top of what you see in real life. Each object that appears in the room has a history, a story, different kinds of stories. At one level how it was made, second the people who were using it, a siege of entertaining, useless and useful information. An extra sensory power know to be held by mythological gods of a Silicon valley available in exchange for mere mortals for bits of gold.
This interface was very different from what the auto-rickshaw driver Sreekanth had on. He could asess the vulnerabilities of passengers, as they came by to ask for a ride. This was a no-man’s land for uber and automated cars. There the augmented individual held ironical powers that contained them within the same social-class.
This narrative form could be an augmented experience, it might suck the joy out of reading books, but it might offer instances not accessible to many others.
It is reasonable to believe that such technology will be misused. However it also had impacts that altered the state of our collective consciousness. Photography was not only used to create things that were tantalizing, it also resulted in the spread of knowledge and well as misinformation. In that optimistic sense, an augmented space could enable synthesis of learnings, create new states of consciousness and literary forms.
Interface for carbon based lifeforms
The need to understand and maintain our current reality itself is burgeoning task, The maintenance of another parallel layer of reality sounds like a challenge. Or could this augmentation help one in the process of maintaining their current reality better?
This brings up the dilemma between the humanist and trans-humanist utopias. If we have only started getting a glimpse of what it means to maintain our body and mind, through practices, procedures, instructions and repetition then we can see how it’s an interface into carbon-based biochemical physical material. A maintenance of this body tool is through an immediate reality but through entities of abstractions like medicine food and habits.
Words as the interface to create a virtual world.
As you can see with words one does have the access to an infinite cloud. With phrases providing transitions between ideas, contexts and temporary meaning structures. If this is a code, this is an interface of creating within one’s mind and transmitting it. What if a virtual space can be coded directly through language ?
