Welcome at the Interface Culture program website.

Acting as creative artists and researchers, students learn how to advance the state of the art of current interface technologies and applications. Through interdisciplinary research and team work, they also develop new aspects of interface design including its cultural and social applications. The themes elaborated under the Master's programme in relation to interactive technologies include Interactive Environments, Interactive Art, Ubiquitous Computing, game design, VR and MR environments, Sound Art, Media Art, Web-Art, Software Art, HCI research and interaction design.

The Interface Culture program at the Linz University of Arts Department of Media was founded in 2004 by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. The program teaches students of human-machine interaction to develop innovative interfaces that harness new interface technologies at the confluence of art, research, application and design, and to investigate the cultural and social possibilities of implementing them.

The term "interface" is omnipresent nowadays. Basically, it describes an intersection or linkage between different computer systems that makes use of hardware components and software programs to enable the exchange and transmission of digital information via communications protocols.

However, an interface also describes the hook-up between human and machine, whereby the human qua user undertakes interaction as a means of operating and influencing the software and hardware components of a digital system. An interface thus enables human beings to communicate with digital technologies as well as to generate, receive and exchange data. Examples of interfaces in very widespread use are the mouse-keyboard interface and graphical user interfaces (i.e. desktop metaphors). In recent years, though, we have witnessed rapid developments in the direction of more intuitive and more seamless interface designs; the fields of research that have emerged include ubiquitous computing, intelligent environments, tangible user interfaces, auditory interfaces, VR-based and MR-based interaction, multi-modal interaction (camera-based interaction, voice-driven interaction, gesture-based interaction), robotic interfaces, natural interfaces and artistic and metaphoric interfaces.

Artists in the field of interactive art have been conducting research on human-machine interaction for a number of years now. By means of artistic, intuitive, conceptual, social and critical forms of interaction design, they have shown how digital processes can become essential elements of the artistic process.
Ars Electronica and in particular the Prix Ars Electronica's Interactive Art category launched in 1991 has had a powerful impact on this dialog and played an active role in promoting ongoing development in this field of research.

The Interface Cultures program is based upon this know-how. It is an artistic-scientific course of study to give budding media artists and media theoreticians solid training in creative and innovative interface design. Artistic design in these areas includes interactive art, netart, software art, robotic art, soundart, noiseart, games & storytelling and mobile art, as well as new hybrid fields like genetic art, bioart, spaceart and nanoart.

It is precisely this combination of technical know-how, interdisciplinary research and a creative artistic-scientific approach to a task that makes it possible to develop new, creative interfaces that engender progressive and innovative artistic-creative applications for media art, media design, media research and communication.

TALK

Queer, Decolonial, and de-essentialized Ecofeminist Reflections on Gender and Nature

16. November 2026, 16.15 bis 17.45 Uhr ONLINE

Die Abteilung Ästhetik und Pragmatik lädt im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung Gender|U zum Vortrag von Asmae Ourkiya ein.

Die Ringvorlesung findet online statt: zoom-Link zur Teilnahme

This lecture develops a queer ecofeminist reading of trans*ecology through the lens of the (re)naturalisation of transness. Historically, transness has been denaturalised by medical, legal, and scientific regimes that frame gender variance as pathological, unnatural, and even criminal, while normative sex/gender binaries are naturalised as the default of being human. Drawing on feminist science studies, decolonial frameworks, and transgender scholarship, this talk demonstrates how Nature has repeatedly been weaponised to enforce and normalise binary sex/gender systems, conceal material-biological diversity, and enforce colonial gender scriptures. Moving beyond adjunct approaches, the lecture positions trans*ecology as a field where embodiment and ecology are co-constitutive. Here, the asterisk serves as an epistemological marker of open-ended plurality and heterogeneous gender variance. Engaging with the insights of -but not limited to- Anne Fausto-Sterling, María Lugones, and contemporary queer, decolonial, intersectional ecofeminist thought, this framework rejects the myth of static biological baselines and advocates for a decategorising ontology that honours both human and multispecies bodily malleability and metamorphosis, while simultaneously destabilising the science-cultural infrastructures that police bodily non-conformities and adherences, to reclaim gender and somatic multiplicity as ancient and significant components of the living world.

Asmae Ourkiya (they/them) is the founder of the Ecofeminist Institute, which focuses on education, training, consulting, and research aimed at combating climate change and ecological challenges. They earned their Ph.D. from Mary Immaculate College at the University of Limerick with a dissertation titled “Queer Ecofeminism: From Binary Environmental Endeavors to Postgender Pursuits.” Dr. Ourkiya is currently writing a second book, “Queer Intersectional Ecofeminism: Theories, Practices, and Future Directions“. Asmae Ourkiya currently works as a Media and Engagement Manager at the European Geosciences Union in Munich, where they manage press releases, coordinate public relations efforts, and oversee the EGU blogs.

Im Wintersemester 2025/26 findet die sechste Ringvorlesung zu intersektionalen Perspektiven auf Geschlechterkonstruktionen statt. Dieses Mal widmen sich die Vorträge den Verschränkungen von Gender und Ökologien. Die Online-Ringvorlesung fragt aus einer kritischen Perspektive nach den Verhältnissen zur Mit-Welt und versammelt machtkritische, rhizomatische, queere, dekoloniale und antifaschistische Perspektiven auf Ökologien. Dabei werden ökologische Krisen als eng mit sozialen Ungleichheiten verflochten verstanden und danach gefragt, wie gerechte und nachhaltige Zukünfte intersektional gedacht werden können.

Wir freuen uns auf den Austausch!

Plakat.pdf