| Sumario: | My paper contains original Word Processor Artcompositions and an explanation of the theoretical grounding for my work. I compose visual images (comprised of words primarily taken from advertisements about the object they construct) in a program not intended for that purpose (Microsoft Word). I break from the expected form of the Word Processor Document to scrutinize how machines, especially computer programs and the graphical user interface (GUI), influence the consumer's utilization of computers. In particular, my project questions how machines influence users' thinking and how the user-friendly inhibits creativity. The process disassembles the notion of user-friendly as a transparent influence and reveals how media shapes the author's imagination and creations. The ever-present PC, in many ways, parallels the presence of the typewriter in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which led artists to experiment with the grid-like form of mechanical type to create concrete and, eventually, dirty concrete poetry. My work is inspired by these artists and the typewriter poetry they composed. My work also references art collective JODI's compositions and how our contemporary society resists the limitations of the GUI. My intent is to draw attention to the media of the composition. My work disobeys the prompts of the GUI to emphasize the idea that pre-packaged programs elicit conditioned responses and stifle genuinely creative uses of computing devices. Nietzsche writes that our writing tools are also working on our thoughts (quoted in ). My purpose in producing this work is not a rejection of computing or the GUI, but to draw attention to an interface's existence and influence on its user. My work points to a creative space outside of conditioned responses to the GUI.
|
|---|