[spectre] Drop Shadow Talks: Jay Bolter

[johannes p osterhoff]

Talk 5 on January 21, 7 pm @ BTK Berlin

Jay David Bolter:
"Performing in the mirror: digital design in the age of social media"

http://dropshadowtalks.com

The Drop Shadow Talks
---------------------
The digital drop shadow is the most popular effect in computer graphics 
today. Easily applied, it made its way to modern graphic design and 
advertising. It raises typography and objects from a flattened 
background into three-dimensionality—and thus significance.

With the current generation of operating systems the drop shadow effect 
entered the graphical user interface to a new extent. In this context it 
raises not only windows from background wallpapers; it also stands for a 
visually enriched interface that strives towards three-dimensionality. 
Loaded with rich imagery, photorealistic icons and pseudo 
three-dimensional configurations the graphical user interface yet 
remains tied to its ?at medium.

Bewildered by this paradox, the graphical user interface leaves the 
office it was made for and becomes a pop culture phenomenon.

This semester the Drop Shadow Talks reply to current developments on the 
visually enriched layer for machine interaction. In the shades of 
evening lectures the Drop Shadow Talks will present art and projects 
influuenced and inspired by the baroque graphical user interface.

This Talk
---------
In the 1990s digital design could focus largely on the World Wide Web as 
a remediation of graphic design for print as well as on interaction 
design for Internet-based experiences. While these areas have not 
disappeared, the development of social media for the Web and now for 
mobile technologies poses new challenges for design. An important 
question is whether polished, transparent, modernist design is 
appropriate or even possible in an era of user-generated contents such 
as the eclectic pages of Facebook and the cluttered Google maps on 
mobile phones. Other design approaches may be suggested by Performance 
Studies: that is, by thinking of digital artifacts as opportunities for 
users to define and perform their own identities—for themselves and for 
their digital “publics”.
The talk will be in English.

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~bolter/

Location?
---------
The talks are located at Berliner Technischen Kunsthochschule in room J/K.
Admission is free.

Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule (BTK)
Hochschule für Gestaltung (FH)
Bernburger Straße 24-25, D-10963 Berlin


-- 
johannes p osterhoff, M.A.
Dozent für Text und Interaktion

Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule (FH)
University of Applied Sciences
Bernburger Str. 24-25, 10963 Berlin

www.btk-fh.de
Tel. +49 30 25358708
Fax. +49 30 26949605