Affect as Medium, or the `Digital-Facial-Image'

Abstract

By exploring a number of contemporary new media artworks that focus on the digitized image of the face, I propose the encounter with the `digital-facial-image' (DFI) as a new paradigm for the human interface with digital data. Whereas the currently predominant model of the human-computer-interface (HCI) functions precisely by reducing the wide-bandwidth of embodied human expressivity to a fixed repertoire of functions and icons, the DFI transfers the site of this interface from computer-embodied functions to the open-ended, positive feedback loop connecting digital information with the entire affective register operative in the embodied viewer-participant. For this reason, the DFI allows us to reconceptualize the very notion of the interface: by bypassing investment in more effective technical `solutions', it invests in the body's capacity to supplement technology - the potential it holds for `collaborating' with the information presented by the interface in order to create images.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.