Critical Interfaces and Digital Making

Authors

  • Steve Anderson

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between critical making in the material world and processes of digital making that take place in the realm of software. Focusing on the evolving status of the interface in the development of three digital humanities-related platforms, the journal Vectors, the electronic publishing tool Scalar and the public media archive Critical Commons, the essay argues that the benefits associated with critical making may take place in the comparatively ethereal realms of software and ideation as well as physical making, and that particularly productive points of convergence may be found at the intersection of software development, user interface and information architecture. This article has a digital component available at http://scalar.usc.edu/works/critical-interfaces

Author Biography

  • Steve Anderson
    Steve Anderson is an Associate Professor at USC's School of Cinematic Arts with appointments in the divisions of Interactive Media & Games and Media Arts + Practice. He is a scholar-practitioner working at the intersections of media, history, technology and culture. He is the author of Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past (2011) and founder of the MacArthur funded public media archive Critical Commons. He is Co-Editor of the interdisciplinary electronic journal Vectors and Co-Principal Investigator of the electronic publishing platform Scalar. For his research project, Technologies of Cinema, Anderson was awarded a 2015 Digital Innovation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

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Published

2015-11-01