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We introduce the concept instrumentness as a quality of human-computer interfaces. Instrumentness points to the way musical instruments are controlled and conceptualized through values such as virtuosity and playability, which are important for computer-mediated creative work supporting development in use beyond what is initially designed for. The paper performs a conceptual investigation into qualities in software interfaces that support creativity, supported by analysis of, and interviews with, musical composers. Instrumentness is explained through discussions of materiality and metonymy as central strategies for computer mediated creativity. The paper is contributing to an investigation of the aesthetics of use in relation to software, pointing to alternative values, differing from traditional usability, which are also relevant in creative work outside art and music composition.

The authors examine how materiality emerges from complex chains of mediation in creative software use. The primarily theoretical argument is inspired and illustrated by interviews with two composers of electronic music. The authors argue that computer mediated activity should not primarily be understood in terms of simple mediation, but rather as chains of complex mediation in which the dominant form of representation is metonymy rather than metaphor.

How the interface has moved from the PC into cultural platforms, as seen in a series of works of net art, software art and electronic literature. The computer interface is both omnipresent and invisible, at once embedded in everyday objects and characterized by hidden exchanges of information between objects. The interface has moved from office into culture, with devices, apps, the cloud, and data streams as new cultural platforms. In The Metainterface, Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold examine the relationships between art and interfaces, tracing the interface's disruption of everyday cultural practices. They present a new interface paradigm of cloud services, smartphones, and data capture, and examine how particular art forms—including net art, software art, and electronic literature—seek to reflect and explore this paradigm. Andersen and Pold argue that despite attempts to make the interface disappear into smooth access and smart interaction, it gradually resurfaces; there is a metainterface to the displaced interface. Art can help us see this; the interface can be an important outlet for aesthetic critique. Andersen and Pold describe the “semantic capitalism” of a metainterface industry that captures user behavior; the metainterface industry's disruption of everyday urban life, changing how the city is read, inhabited, and organized; the ways that the material displacement of the cloud affects the experience of the interface; and the potential of designing with an awareness of the language and grammar of interfaces.