folderculture, I. Gwilt (2010) lasercut acrylic, aluminium, data projection

LABS

Mixed Reality Art and the Graphical User Interface by Ian Gwilt

Posted by on

Leonardo Abstract Services (LABS) 2010-2011
Mixed Reality Art and the Graphical User Interface

This hybrid (practice/thesis) examines the phenomenon of mixed-reality art through the form of the graphical user interface (GUI) as an emergent site of creative practice. Utilising three methodologies – the documentation of practice; a conceptual framing; and a series of personal experimental artworks – I explore the creative manifestation of the GUI. This is undertaken using the following terms: as a computer-based interface; as material artefact; and as augmented reality construct. The thesis builds a position around the idea that differing manifestations of the GUI aesthetic as represented in digital, physical and mixed-reality constructs can be used to examine the recent interest in the concept of ‘mixed-reality’ as a site of creative enquiry. The artworks that make up the documented practice element of this thesis represent an exploration into the visual language of the GUI through the above three terms.

Through this practice/thesis I will establish the premise that by creatively repositioning the GUI, it is possible to challenge our understanding and expectations of the conventional computer interface wherein icons no longer function as navigational devices and can be removed from the context of the computer desktop interface by varying scale, media and configuration. Moreover, that shifts in representation and form allow for the (d)evolution of the computer desktop metaphor back into object-based artefacts and hybrid configurations. In doing so, metaphoric ambiguities are created, which act as a lens for considering our relationship with computer technologies and the role they have taken in our social, cultural and creative environs.

In the final chapter of this thesis I describe in some detail a selection of my own works created over a six-year period between 2002 and 2008. Accompanying this written text is a CD-ROM, which contains additional documentation associated with these works. The concepts and works documented through the written thesis represent an original attempt to draw together and define current activities associated with the GUI as a creative site of enquiry or conceptual trigger for thinking through notions of mixed-reality art.

Degree: PhD Art history and Theory
Year: 2009/10
Pages: 175
University: University of New South Wales
Supervisor: Dr Anna Munster
Language: English
Dept: Art history and Theory – New Media
Copyright: Ian Gwilt
Lang_author: English – some Spanish
Url:
Email: i.gwilt@shu.ac.uk
Keywords: mixed reality, augmented reality, art, graphical user interface, GUI, new media art history
LEONARDO ABSTRACTS SERVICE (LABS) is a comprehensive collection of Ph.D., Masters and MFA thesis abstracts on topics in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology.

If you are interested you can submit your abstract to the English LABS, Spanish LABS, Chinese LABS and French LABS international Peer Review Panels for inclusion in their respective databases. The authors of abstracts most highly ranked by the panel will also be invited to submit an article for consideration for publication in the refereed journal Leonardo.

Lanfranco Aceti is known for his social activism and extensive career as artist, curator, and academic. He is a research affiliate and visiting professor at ACT @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Arts Administration Program at Boston University. He is also the Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, The MIT Press. He has exhibited numerous personal projects including Car Park, a public performance in the UK at the John Hansard Gallery; Who The People?, an installation artwork acquired in its entirety by the Chetham’s Library and Museum in Manchester; Sowing and Reaping, installation artworks acquired in their entirety by the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Cyprus; and Hope Coming On, a site-specific choral performance he designed for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with the collaboration of the Boston Children’s Chorus, and realized in front of Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). In 2017, Aceti prepared a series of new artworks for an exhibition entitled Shimmer and curated by Irini Papadimitriou (V&A) at the Tobazi Mansion in Hydra, a new large choral performance titled Accursed for the Thessaloniki Biennial in Greece; and Knock, Knock, Knocking a public space installation in the Mediterranean Garden Pavilion of the New Sea Waterfront of Thessaloniki.