What is my passion? Following the feedback from the previous week, I spent lots of time thinking about my position and inquiry, and what I wanted to do with the mechanism of the touch screen. And I reached my position which was to reflect and find the characteristic of our contemporary life by focusing on the screen itself rather than the device. So still, my inquiry was “What makes the screen unique from others?”
Since I was still interested in the mechanism of the touch screen(touching/finding a position and losing connection on the grid), I decided to move further by playing with this idea.
In a beginning, I did research the invisibility of mechanisms. There were several experts mentioned the invisibility of mechanisms or mediums from different positions.
- Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, asked the question “What is the equipment(thing)?” in his writing <Being and Time>(1927) to understand the human being, ultimately. “Tools are in a way that is not noticeable to us because they are attached without distance by human existence.”
- Hubert Dreyfus(1929-) also mentioned “It is most effective when humans do not recognize that they use a tool, that is, when the tool is invisible to the human eye.”
- Mark Weiser, a computer scientist, first used the word ‘Ubi-comp’ to represent invisible computing. According to him, the greatest technology is one that is invisible and can’t be felt by people.
The similarity between these three experts is that the tools and technologies are invisible when it’s working well for us. Here, I set my keyword to “Immediacy”(J.D. Bolter & R. Grusin) and seamlessness because the mechanism of the touch screen I focused on also invisible from the same perspective not just from the materialistic approach.
Touch screen => Invisible on both aspects of the device mechanism and digital interface
Focusing on invisibility/seamlessness/immediacy, I draw a red grid on the paper and made them invisible by putting a red film on it. After scanning this, I printed the scanned image and draw a red grid on it. And then put a red film on it and scanned it again. By repeating this process, I tried to move back and forth between invisibility and visibility.
Also, continuing the dualistic mechanism, I considered how to visualize this invisible mechanism and system behind the screen. Finally, I made two types of Mobius strips. For the first version, I wrote down ‘The location point has been found.’ on one side of the paper and ‘The connection has been lost.’ on the other side. And by connecting the edges with twisting, I made them into the shape of a Mobius strip. So people could read two sentences again and again if they follow the sentences. For the other version, I draw a grid that has lost some spots on one side of the paper and marked the same spot without drawing the grid on the other side. So this time, people could see the lost point on the grid and the mark(found point) repeatedly if they follow the strip.
Feedback:
The dualistic relationship is interesting. Think about dualistic relationships on the other screens. For example, ‘Silk screen’ could have a different dualistic relationship in its process.
The red grid and the red film are working well in terms of invisibility. Combining the idea of doing screenshot of the safari tabs and using red grid and films might bring some interesting process.