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.
Rekursive Darstellungsformen in der Geschichte der Landschaftskunst
VERSCHOBEN, neuer Termin folgt (ursprünglich 11. November 2025) Kunstuniversität Linz, Domgasse 1, Expostmusikraum, 4020 Linz
Vortrag von Hartmut Böhme im Rahmen der Reihe Räume der Rekursion veranstaltet von der Abteilung Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie und des PhD Research Collectives.
Seit der Renaissance entstehen bildimmanente Darstellungsformen, die die These wahrscheinlich machen, dass Bilder begannen, sich selbst zu denken: das reflexive Bild, wie es Victor Stoichiță entwickelte. Bilder, die sich selbst zum Gegenstand machen; Bilder, die ihre Theorie verborgen enthalten oder offen manifestieren; Bilder, die in unendlichen Variationen sich entwickeln und dabei Mimesis und Realismus destabilisieren; metapikturale Zeichen in Bildern; Motive, die auf reflexiven Wiederholungen beruhen; Bilder als Fallen, als Täuschung oder als Spiel. Der Vortrag wird diese hier nur angedeuteten theoretischen Probleme einer Ästhetik der Rekursive anschaulich an Beispielen aus der Kunstgeschichte zur Diskussion stellen.
Hartmut Böhme war 1977-92 Professor für Neuere Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Hamburg sowie 1993-2012 Professor für Kulturtheorie und Mentalitätsgeschichte an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Er war vielfach Leiter von DFG-Forschungsprojekten, z.B. Sprecher des Sonderforschungsbereichs „Transformationen der Antike“ (bis 2012). Er publiziert u.a. zur Kulturgeschichte der Natur und der Elemente und erforscht die Kunst- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Mundraums. Von seinen kulturwissenschaftlichen Arbeiten ist Fetishism and Culture. A different Theory of Modernity hervorzuheben (2006/2014/2021). Seine übrigen Schwerpunkte liegen in der Kulturgeschichte seit der Antike und der Literaturgeschichte des 18. – 20. Jahrhunderts. Weitere Arbeiten widmen sich der Philosophie, der Ästhetik und Kunst sowie der Historischen Anthropologie. Siehe auch: www.hartmutboehme.de
Die Veranstaltungsserie wird von Caroline Salfinger (Kunstuniversität Linz, PhD Research Collective sowie Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie) ausgerichtet und von Anne von der Heiden (Kunstuniversität Linz, Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie) unterstützt.
