Interface Envelope

Human life is increasingly mediated by digital interfaces. Computers, laptops, tablet PCs, mobile phones, video games and many other devices operate as the medium through which a variety of activity is undertaken. While a range of work has investigated the symbolic and representational logics of interfaces, little work has explored or theorised the material and affective nature of interfaces.Drawing upon trends in contemporary video game design, James Ash argues that interfaces produce envelopes of space / time that serve to focus users' perception on the present moment. In turn, he argues that these fields are deployed by video game companies in order to generate sensory-motor skill that are the basis of new forms of affective value. While these processes are currently limited to video game design, the conclusion points to how the generation of these narrow phenomenal envelopes is expanding into other settings. "The Interface Envelope "develops this argument through a theoretical engagement with a variety of thinkers such as Callois, Heidegger, Stiegler, Harman and Nancy to emphasize how a phenomenological encounter with technology shapes the temporal structure of action, cognition and the comportment of the body. This theoretical development allows a critical re-election between the concrete phenomenology of lived experience in gaming and a number of pressing concerns around problematics of attention, affect and the commodification of perception.