Language/Art/Interfaces

"The world view of a culture is limited by thestructure of the language which that culture uses." [Whorf (from Language, Thought and Reality, 1956)] An interface is a structure through which communication/relations take place. To relate in different ways, new structures are required and these need to be learnt (either through evolutionary development or through training). Therefore, the building of new interfaces allows for new perspectives of our relationship with technology, and it is easier to introduce such new structures through experience rather than through spoken language due to the immediacy of experience as opposed to the distance that exists between spoken language and sensory experience. Art enables such experiences to take place in a way that then allows them to be incorporated into spoken forms of language and communication.

However, it also needs to be clear that I’m not discussing issues of communication. I’m not trying to establish a system within which humans and technology can communicate in a way that replicates how humans communicate with humans. This system is entirely different, both more concrete and more abstract. Of course, understanding is required, but this has nothing to do with conceptual/linguistic understanding. The fact that digital technologies use code and ‘programming languages’ to operate and process their functions is a completely separate issue.

For the analysis of what this ‘performance’ is, I need a breakdown of how this performance happens – what are the relations, how do they occur. This needs to be shown through the case studies. I’m noting this because information is going to be a player within this and I need to work out where and how it fits.