To focus accurately:
- Center the split-image rangefinder on a key vertical element in your picture and rotate the focusing ring (18) until the upper and lower portions blend into a single clear vertical image.
- When there are no prominent verticals on which to center the split-image rangefinder, focusing with the micro-prism collar is particularly useful. When centered on your key picture element the microprism collar will appear to be fragmented. By rotating the focusing ring the image will become clear, confirming sharp focus.”
- The entire focusing screen may be used for both focusing and picture composition. However, since the human eye tends to overlook minor differences in sharpness, the rangefinder and/or microprism collar should always be used to achieve critical focusing.
Vivitar XV-3 Owner’s Manual, Vivitar Corporation, 1979.
Originally coined in the 1880s as a scientific term for the surface along which two adjacent bodies meet, the term ‘interface’ was taken up by the nascent discipline of ergonomics in the late 1940s to describe the site at which the human body interacts with a complex mechanical apparatus. The interface is the crucial but often overlooked element in what ergonomics identifies as the ‘man–machine system.’ It is the hyphen between ‘man’ and ‘machine’ that articulates the system as a whole. Whether it is a screen, a keyboard, a sitting surface, and proscenium, or a curtain wall, an interface is a complex apparatus that appears as a simple surface. Although it appears to be unitary, if is always fragmentary and complex; although it seems to be two-dimensional, it is always at least three-dimensional and rendered in depth; although it seems to be solid and impermeable, it is always carefully perforated to allow strategically mediated interactions between us and machines.”
The Interface, John Harwood, 2011
Whatever ‘lies between’ is called interface, whatever allows us to link two different elements, to reconcile them, to put them into communication.”
Design Interface, Giancarlo Barbacetto, 1987
This is a project is about information, the interface, and overlays. Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) grew up alongside the internet. Similar to the military origins of the internet's decentralizing nodal networks, some of the earliest GUIs came forward for use in RADAR outputs.
Since the introduction of the WIMP (window, icon, menu and pointing device) paradigm in in the early 1960s, our views of and into computers have been thoroughly mediated through a series of views, stacked layers of information.
The window in particular is of special note here: these ethereally smooth transparencies allowing a view to somewhere else. The glass of the iPhone, the view through a windshield, and so on. But real transparency is hard to come by. Windows get dirty, smudged, coated in rain, blocked out by mesh screens, and sometimes shattered completely.
Instead of focusing on what lies beyond the window, let's hone in on the window itself, on whatever lies between.
Go outside (out into the world) or online (deep into the internet) and look around. Find at least 3 examples of stacked information—a new layer of information added onto an existing surface. These could be artificial, digital, temporary, analog, or otherwise. It could be from a movie, a friend, a store, a library, anywhere. Find a way to document your overlays. Redraw them, take photos, screenshots, text only, etc.
To think about:
What is this overlay doing? What information does it give you? What information does it hide? What does it look like? Who designed it? Why do you (dis)like it? Where did it come from? Does it block information, frame information, add a new message? How do you think it got here?
Deliverable:
Create a presentation documenting your findings. This should be thorough. It should include text and images and allow you to be prepared to talk about these overlays. You can prepare it as scans, a PDF, a PowerPoint, a website. Link to it from your class homepage. Pay attention to its form and typography.
Due: July 18
Based on feedback from the class and your own intuition, choose one of your three overlays to continue working with. Start trying to isolate what makes makes your overlay specific, memorable, unique, or typical.
Find analogous examples and note their form, these are the alternate worlds of your overlay. What forms do they share? Take a web browser for instance. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all have their own specific styles, icons, and subtle differences in form, but the notion of tabs, search bars, scrollbars, etc. has little variation. Camera viewfinders too have their own subtle differences for focusing and framing.
Deliverable:
Create a webpage showing the alternate worlds of your overlay. You can think of this as something of an audit or a collection. This webpage should be thorough, rich, and thick with examples, at least 25. For each instance. What is it? Where is it? How did you find it? When is it from?
Due: Aug. 1
Design your own information overlay. It should be inspired by and/or adopt an analogous function to your audit auditing. You should become an expert in your overlay knowing things like what it does, what it hides, and why it looks a certain way, etc. Give it a form, draw it by hand, code it, use text. It can be graphic or not.
In class on July 18th we’ll begin discussing how to create web bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are simple tools to extend the surf and search capabilities of web browsers. They’ve been around since 1998 (20 years!), and have managed to endure as useful add-ons. They work the same way a bookmark does, but instead of taking you to a new page, they inject to a small bit of code to modify the current page. You’ll be turning your information overlay into a bookmarklet.
Final Deliverables:
Due: Aug. 1
Bookmarklets
Here are a few examples of Bookmarklets in the wild
Suggested (Optional) Readings
Links will all appear in library.
Video References