Kitchen Visit

9/08-2007

Our assignment is to design a prototype for an educational website for the Cookery Programmes of the Otago Polytechnic.

We visited the kitchen where the cookery students train so that we could get a better idea of their workspace, with the possibility of designing an interface based on the metaphor of a commercial kitchen.

joaquin.co.nz

joaquin.co.nz

The Embodied Computer/User

by Deborah Lupton
From The Cybercultures Reader
ed David Bell and Barbara Kennedy 2001

Lupton suggests an emotional attachment between computer and user 'which usually makes itself overtly known when something goes wrong.'

• The computer/user relationship becomes blurred as the role of the computer moves from an inanimate object to an extension of the body - typing has become faster and more natural than handwriting - 'an almost seamless transition of thought to word on the screen.' This shows an embodied relationship with the computer
  
• A disembodied model is also offered; the computer is a means of escaping the human body. This is exemplified by such sites as Second Life which allow the user to build their own avatar and interact with other virtual versions of other people.
• A challenge to the model of the disembodied computer user is the computer 'hacker'. Affected physically by their hacking addictions, their appearance contrasts their online profile.
  
• Lupton also analyzes the human/computer relationship in terms of anthropomorphism. Human qualities are applied to the computer. The computer goes through a life: it is born, it sleeps, it gets sick (viruses), it thinks, it has a language and it longs to be thin. Computer marketing frequently draws on an analogy between computers and humans to reduce computerphobia.
  

Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media

Lev Manovich is the Professor of Visual Arts at the university of California, teaching new media art and theory. Unlike Bolter and Gromala's window/mirror metaphor for interface design, Manovich sees the interface as a filter, shaping how the computer user perceives the content. He describes the emergence of this filter: 'The role of the computer shifted from being a particular technology (calculator, processor) to a filter for all culture; a media for cultural and artistic production.
A parrallel is drawn to the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, stating that the interface is a non-transparent code affecting the user's understanding just as 'human thinking is determined by the code of natural language.' Just as the format of the interface affects the way it is interpreted, so too does the user's own cultural background.
The content cannot be separated from the interface. One does not exist without the other - the interface preexists the content.