You are the controller: ubiquitous interfaces and interactive new media art installations

This paper explores the “invisible” ubiquitous interface, the utopian and dystopian stories told about this technology and the consequent meanings attributed to them. I look at interactive digital media art installations that intervene in these stories, critiquing the claims about technology they make, the relationships they promote and the potential that artistic and collaborative experimentation has for destabilizing and reconfiguring them. My argument is that the word invisible, when applied to the interface in interactive digital media art installations, represents the commodification of human and nonhuman bodies. Commodification also implies a linear process of technology whereby relationships, entities and technological developments are linked together in a pre-determined fashion. In doing this, human behavior and experience is, among other things, reduced to an algorithmic commodity, ultimately creating a single, stable, unified perspective of what the interface is, rather than what it could become.