Before Ink Starts to Blink. Scripts and Diagrams as Interfaces?

18. Novermber 2014, 14.00 Uhr Interface Culture Lecture Room, K2, 3.OG

Interface Cultures lädt im Rahmen der IC Lectures Series zum Vortrag von Michael Rottmann.

The technical interfaces of Human-Machine-Interaction like Ivan Sutherlands Sketchpad are nowadays regarded as a prototype of an interface. They are – to give a working definition – these parts of a system, which make places available, where humans can act on by pushing a button or point at something, to ‚communicateʽ with the machine. In my lecture I want to demonstrate – picking up this definition – the interface-potential of scripts and diagrams. In the course of it the term interface will be reflected and mediatheoretical considerations about the script and the diagram introduced. For it their specific properties like the operativity and physical consistence will be discussed. A media archaeology shall reveal how such media could function as interfaces in historical man-machine-configurations, as a part of interaction-systems (Luhman) consisting of multiple humans, as well as for the individual. By fathoming the interface-concept interconnections between media- and communication studies, computer science and didactic will be established. 

Michael Rottmann
works as art historian in Vienna. After a professional training as IT-merchant studies in art, art history, mathematics and philosophy in Stuttgart, Vienna and Berlin. 2004-2007 scientific assistant at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Education Ludwigsburg (BW/Germany). 2007-2008 curator at mumok - Museum of Modern Art Vienna and Technical University Vienna. Schoolar of  Landesgraduiertenstiftung Baden Württemberg and 2008-2012 of the DFG research training group »notational iconicity« at the Freie Universität Berlin. 2013 receiving a doctorate at the Institute of Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin with the dissertation »Geometries, Numbers, Diagrams. Fine Art in New York around 1960 in the Mirror of Mathematics«. Current assistant lecturer at KFU Graz.