Interface and Leiten

Video Conferencing

“…This insight-the effective dependence of user interface operations on various other interface operations, which need not be equally perceptible-has previously been an insight of disciplines such as software studies, media studies, and app studies (e.g., Fuller, Cramer 2008;Distelmeyer 2018Weltevrede, Jansen 2019). Now this context is, to a certain extent, coming to the fore.…”

“…For example, in April 2020, Zoom Video Communications Inc. responded to the "Zoom bombing" issues by announcing new software defaults for password entry and automatic "waiting rooms." And on the same basis of programmatic flexibility, other forms of "interface mise-en-scène" (Distelmeyer 2018) can always be created and replaced. The presentation of user interfaces can easily change as Microsoft Teams has shown with "Together Mode"-"In a conceived scene setting [like a cinema, a curved outside amphitheater or a boardroom table], participants have seats with video streams" (Microsoft 2021)-followed by Zoom with its "Immersive View" of similarly staged seating arrangement, including a kitchen, an art gallery, a classroom, or a ski lift: "Immersive View allows hosts to arrange video participants and webinar panelists into a single virtual background, bringing people together into one scene to connect and collaborate in a cohesive virtual meeting space" (Zoom 2021a).…”

Algorithms as complementary abstractions

“…the interface adds or imposes). This suspicion can be found in the concept of “depresentation” (van den Boomen, 2014) or inquiries into interfaces using questions of representation and indexicality (Distelmeyer, 2018). Galloway, although he describes the interface as an “effect,” still ties this to ideology and thus also remains within that frame of suspicion.…”

“…In contrast, Chun (2004) argues that for all the necessary focus on calculation and code, visual knowledge persists. Distelmeyer’s (2018) use of the concept of “operational images” similarly conceives of the interface as an inherent part of the functionality of information technology.…”