<nettime-ann> HyperKult XX: Call for Participation

[Moderator IuG <iug@leuphana.de>]

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HyperKult 20
Computers as Media

Trivialization

Call for Participation

July 7th to 9th, 2011
Leuphana University Lüneburg
Computing and Media Centre and
Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media

sponsored by
Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V. (GI), working Group Computers as Media

Computers are extremely complex machines for which, since early times,  
their inner workings have to be hidden behind interfaces in order to  
use them. Software engineering and interface design have developed  
strategies of information hiding and functional segmentation to  
accomplish this. Systems like Doug Engelbart's NLS, Ivan Sutherland's  
Sketchpad, Alan Kay's Dynabook, the Graphical User Interfaces, the  
iTunes Store, Facebook and Cloud Computing are examples of highly  
complex designs that show simplicity at their surface. People are not  
expected to know anything about what goes on at the backend.

But surprisingly and on top of usual simplifications a new mode of  
design appears along with mobile devices and capacitative screens: the  
trivialization of information processes. Devices with technical  
specifications that personal computers possessed ten years ago,  
without cables, keyboards or mice, mimicking chocolate bars and slates  
formerly known as equipment of first graders now seduce us to once  
again paint with our fingers and grope for the objects of our desire.  
And we are content and buy these gadgets, millions a day. Things are  
easy once again, much easier than we would ever accept them to be on a  
conventional PC. Trivialized users are happy to touch what they have  
learned to desire from the screen. The haptic replaces the visual and  
the intellectual as if to compensate for the loss of the material that  
computers imposed on us. And this renders the wonders of shortly  
elapsed times, like the interactivity of media art, to become 99 Cents  
worth's items in an app store. Is there anybody who is still taken by  
surprise? Is it really all that trivial?

But: trivialization is in no way trivial. Programming stays in between  
of art and magic and what we meet here are highlights of these skills  
that are admirable in every aspect.

This trend even prevails in the information systems at large,  
especially those of highest acceptance: Google's Page Rank replaces  
significance, iPods don't want to be computers, Facebook utterly  
trivializes friendship, hopefully taken metaphorically by everybody,  
Cloud Computing hides responsibility for data.

Does the computer become a trivial machine, the "love affair of the  
western culture", as Heinz von Foerster put it? It is the feuilleton  
that is now the place for criticism of the digital, not the corner of  
those capable of reading assembler code? Isn't there anything left be  
looked behind? Has everything really gotten that trivial?

We would like to discuss these issues with you at HyperKult this year,  
being the twentieth of our workshop series. Contributions from art,  
science, humanities and technology are highly welcome. Please send us  
your sketches, abstracts and ideas, not more than one or two pages,  
via email to

hyperkult@leuphana.de

until April 23th 2011.

You will be informed about acceptance until May 8th.

Program Comittee:
Lena Bonsiepen
Wolfgang Coy
Rolf Großmann
Wolfgang Hagen (asked)
Jochen Koubek
Andreas Möller (asked)
Claus Pias
Martin Schreiber
Georg Christoph Tholen
Georg Trogemann (asked)
Anna Tuschling
Martin Warnke


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