Interface Cultures at Ars Electronica 2015

Post-Post 

Lehrkörper:  Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Michaela Ortner, Reinhard Gupfinger and Marlene Brandstätter

Mit Arbeiten von
Marta Perez Campos, Tassilo Posegga, Gisela Nunes, Martin Nadal, Patricia Margarit Castell, Nina Mengi, César Escudero Andaluz,  Daniel Samperio, Mario Costa, Jens Vette, Clemens Bauder, Davide Bevilacqua, Carina Lindmeier, Federico Tasso, Jure Fingust, Isidora Ficovic, Ivan Petkov, Yen Tzu Chang and Oliver Lehner

Post-media, post-web and post-digital are the new buzzwords of our times. Media are now available everywhere and anytime; in fact, it is becoming difficult to switch them off and remain “off-grid.” Smart devices, geo media and surveillance systems are spinning a dense panoptic web all around us. [1] The physical world is becoming increasingly infiltrated by digital technologies, while social networks have turned us into “smart mobs” whose behavior can be foreseen and pre-calculated.

It has become the norm to have almost all facets of our lives augmented by media.  Post-media merely means that media are now an integral part of our technological lifestyle.  

Herlander Elias states that in this post media world nothing is ever finished and “update is the default setting.”  [1] According to him, our screen civilization is so accustomed to interaction and connectivity that interfaces have become invisible; we do not even notice them.

But there is a downside to all of these increased interactions and connections: we need to constantly pull, save, collect, publish, edit and connect, but we are also beginning to realize that all of this is not really necessary. A kind of protest movement is emerging in this “post-Google” and “post-Snowden” world, where the old is the new new and being passive and critical is the new trend.  

So how about being post-post, instead of being post-media? Being beyond something else is a sign of progress, but what about being beyond being beyond? Are we really there yet?

This year’s Interface Cultures student project exhibition constitutes a provocative answer to the new post-media trends. The projects that are presented can be futuristic, retro, post-, pre-, post-post or just art. While we of course need to be aware of new technological and societal trends and to reflect on them, we do not need to feel obliged to follow all of them. Being post-post is our artistic answer.