Ecologies of Transformation

The “interface” is dead. It depended upon distinctions between elements that needed some intermediation. This was always an illusion, but it served some purpose for a time in simplifying design tasks while more substantial system ecologies developed. But we were never separate from systems that needed an interface, and now, the idea that the interface mediates interactions between us and computational systems misses almost the entire mark as human interactions, computational devices and the world become ever more entangled into social, economic, political, and environmental relations. A better concept might be the interlace. We are inherently intertwined with myriad systems with myriad agencies. And most of these systems are not primarily about us, we just live there. Some of these conditions are better engaged with enhanced visibility and cogence, and for others, it makes no difference.

The C&C and DIS joint art exhibition Ecologies of Transformation presents seventeen pieces – performances, interactive artworks, conceptual experiments – making-felt and pushing the boundaries for the interfacial foldings of people, systems and environments that transcend scales of time, space, materiality, cognition and logics. We invite you to join us in the exploration of machine learning poetry and imaging, deep neural networks for collaborative musical performances, moss, vapour, honey and bacterial interfaces and intimate engagements with landscape-size immersive visualisations – and much more.

Maybe interfaces haven’t died, they’ve just fractally multiplied and become pervasive at all levels, becoming the fabric of our material/computational/biotic phenomena.