Hi all-
(Forgive the cross-postings; forward if you'd like...)
I'm throwing out a request to address something I find missing on the Internet, which is the answer to "what do we stare at all day (and night) long?" Working in media, it seems we spent a good deal of our time building ways to expressively control machines, or working with open-ended software environments, or abusing the control metaphors of shrink-wrap applications. But there isn't any place to go to get a sense of the range of current interface building activity for media. Much of what can be found is dispersed, and categorically coalesces around "finshed products" or simple tutorial examples.
I'm asking that you send me documentation of your user-interfaces so that I can build a publicly accessible archive to address this lack. Submissions will be accepted and published without aesthetic judgement. In fact, I'm hoping that the "one-off" interfaces so easy to produce now, the abandoned works, or the messes that you don't have the energy to clean up will find their way to me. These are the kinds of artifacts that will be hopelessly lost to future generations. :( Your images can depict working, non-working or imaginary ways to expressively control time-based and interactive media.
You must be the author of your submission. It must be your expression. You must have created it somehow. I'm aware that data-bending is often the mis-use of non-authored work, but perhaps the benders will have some ideas about how to get their activities across. Coders and command-line types will have these issues as well.
Please send me your screen-shots, digital photos of hardware, scans of pencil sketches, or whatever, along with your name, email address and (hopefully) a brief description of what your submission(s) is/are about.
I will publish everything I receive. I will likely, although I don't have any pre-conceptions, establish some (potentially changing) means of categorizing the submissions in order to faciltitate access to what I hope will be a large body of work.
In sending in your submission, you retain all copyrights to your work. You are giving me non-exclusive permission to display your submission on my web-site <www.propheticdesire.com> for non-commercial, archival purposes.
Your email address will be displayed in some manner not easily harvested. Submissions will be dated by the date they are received.
Please send your submissions to: gui@propheticdesire.com
As I will be traveling the first part of May, realistically it will be the end of May before submmissions begin to be published. As this will be an on-going effort, there are no deadlines or limits on the number of submissions.
Thanks for your attention, and hopefully we can create a unique view of creative computer-based media authorship.
Best,
Charles Turner (Tad) (vze26m98) (vatic)