course
description

Most of our life transactions are mediated by interfaces. Nevertheless,  far from being neutral entities, interfaces exercise a great deal of  power over its users, representing one of the major anti-democratic  governance entities in our society. In this program we will look into  the ways interfaces are affecting us as a global society and will  collectively think on ways to democratize them. Interfaces for the  people!

This program seeks to critically reveal, analyze, and connect the  complex
 network of agents that converge on the configuration of the  Graphic User
 Interface (GUI). During this four week course

we will  creatively reveal,
 deconstruct, and re-articulate the material and  immaterial elements that
 make up the GUI in order to reflect on its  role and influence within
 the social, political, economic, cultural and  emotional spheres of the
 networked society.

The main purpose of the program is to
 provide students with the  theoretical background on UI design along with technical skills, such as  basic HTML and CSS, to explore, develop and
 test disruptive  methodologies as we strive to incorporate democratic values within
  Interfaces.

course outline

Week 1: Beyond the Interface I: Internet infrastructures, Data flows & Geopolitics. During this week we will reveal the main infrastructures and actors (companies and agencies) that configure the Internet and will explore how the data is traveling across

Week 2: Beyond the Interface II: Online surveillance and commodification of Data. In this session we will show how the data that we generate through interfaces is being tracked, harvested and commodified. We will look into the methodologies and tools used

Week 3: Interface materiality: The environmental impact of code. During this session we will learn how code is constructing web interfaces. We will look closely to HTML and CSS and explain how this languages work. At the same time, we will look into the e

Week 4: In the last week of the program we will discuss how graphic interface design is homogenizing behavior in a global a scale and the several consequences of this process. On the other hand we will experiment with simple disruptive methodologies to in

who is this class for?

This program is for artists, designers, writers, makers, coders, journalists and researchers interested in understanding, exploring, and disrupting networks and interfaces. We will also investigate the underlying intentions of user interfaces, and how UI designs demonstrate the latent political, socioeconomic, emotional, and cultural opinions of their designers from both a theoretical and hands-on perspective. During the program we will reveal the underlying narratives embedded in everyday interfaces, such as Facebook and Google, in order to reveal to what extent they sculpt and govern our realities in silent ways.