NAVIGATE
Curated by Cathie Davies

Art viewers who are underexposed to art constructed with digital media often question how it can be more than a showcase for the technology that contains it. This is a version of a question asked of new media since the invention of photography - "Where does the art lie?"

My answer to this question involves a pivotal and unique formal quality of digital media - interface design. Interface refers to the communicative connection between a user and the technology they are accessing, for example, the kiosk, keyboard, monitor, and card swipe of an ATM machine. Interface design is the process of structuring and conveying choice, the information architecture of a digital tool.

An interface is an organization of choices, and as such is ideological; the way these choices are presented enforces the worldview of the body that made the interface, be that an individual, corporation, or government. A network (like the Internet) is a shared interface that mediates human communication; this mediation is ideological too. Who navigates the Internet, and how? What messages are threaded into the choices users can and can't make?

Interfaces, and the choices they direct, constitute a structured experience that can influence the will of users. Multi-million dollar interfaces developed by large corporations can do this on a massive scale, for the sake of financial gain. What happens when artists begin to self-consciously compose sets of digital options?

The works presented in Navigate each contain strategic, experimental choices in interface design. These interfaces vary from passive to aggressive, from inscrutable to intuitive, and from humorous to poetic.

CD-ROMS

Dis/siM
by Sarah Rosenbaum

Good and Evil
by Ken Marchionno

Juvenate
by Michelle Glaser

Consumertopia
by Andrew Bucksbarg

 

WEB SITES:

Lovemoderne
www.lovemoderne.cl
by German Bobe

House of Drafts
www.house-of-drafts.org
by Jeanne Finley and Lynne Sachs

www.11111111111.com
by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

Portrait of the Artist As A Homepage
www.geocities.com/portraitoftheartistasahomepage/
www.portraitoftheartistasahomepage.com
by Anonymous