the cybernetic conflation of biological surprising. Rather, the example provides A thousand tiny interfacings: and technical of which Simondon is so an opportunity to consider some of the fertile acts of resistance. dismissive [6], which Massumi creative potential of interfacing and its describes as the ‘industry philosophy’ ability to complicate the event. I want to Andrew Goodman [7]. This extension of the ‘prosthetic use this work to rethink the place of the Monash University Department of Fine function’ of the interface is utilized as a interface within the paradigm of process Art, Melbourne, AUS. method of controlling ‘a relay point in philosophy, and to put it to productive Email: the dissemination of human ordering use as a differential tactic within an art <[email protected]> activity into space…transform[ing it] process. Here I will propose that the into a realm of expansion onto which interface might provide a logic of self- the human projects itself’, with real regulation capable of internally driving Abstract difference erased as the body the creation of intensities of resonance This paper examines the process of interfacing ‘disappears behind a techno-logical or disturbance through connection. between organic and technical objects and how this might be utilized as a tactic to promote invention shield’ [8]. This subjectification of the within new media art events. Raphael Lozano- technical object, Munster has pointedly 2. Interfacing Hemmer’s Relational Architecture is examined in relation to concepts of parasitic action and folding termed ‘interfaciality’, a codification as I propose to begin by thinking to show how the work develops a complex ecology face to face, rather than body to temporally rather than spatially, by of relation through interfacing. machine relation [9]. thinking of these interfaces as moments Keywords: Interface, parasite, folds, Nevertheless, the primary sticking rather than points of action or relation. concretization, ecology, autopoiesis, relation. point for any level of discussion of the This suggests that the interface might interface within process philosophy now be thought of more as a process of remains that its distinctive identity relies interfacing, as an unfolding or 1. Introduction on it being a privileged site of contingent process within a larger nexus These spaces between are more interaction within an otherwise inert of relation, as an in-action moment of complicated than one might think…less representational system. In this paper I intensity of disruption, contrast and a juncture under control than an want to attempt to show some ways in invention rather than a privileged or adventure to be had. Michel Serres [1] which one might think through the static position within an art event. process of interfacing as a creative force Here I will briefly consider the idea of Philosopher Brian Massumi has argued within an art event without succumbing an art event as a machine producing that the interface is an unsustainable to the type of static, representational transductions of forces, before concept within a process-centered models of which Massumi is justifiably attempting to unpack the creative role of world. As a ‘privileged site of critical. interfacings in Re:Positioning Fear by mediation’ within a system, he argues, To do this I am going to examine a suggesting that interfacing might [2] the idea of the interface as a prime particular incidence of interfacing that productively parasite, fold or concretize; site of creativity and interaction denies occurred in Raphael Lozano-Hemmer’s three different, though sympathetic, what in process philosophy might be work Re:Positioning Fear: Relational concepts concerned with intensive seen as the relational nature of all Architecture 3, (1997), in order to organization and creativity. entities. Massumi’s philosophical stance consider ways in which some unplanned emphasizes the ‘primacy of processes of interfacings between a public and the 2.1 Differential machines becoming over the states of being technical assemblages of the work In this paper, I am going to use the through which they pass’ [3], that is, the helped to develop a greater level of both terms ‘body’ and technical object’ in fact that any entities that are interfacing self organization and openness in the specific ways. Following Katherine with each other are themselves event. But, while I am certainly going to Hayle, the ‘body’ referred to here is in composed of relations. As such, discrete suggest in this paper that an interesting no way limited to the subject or to a interfaces are problematic in that they shift in agency in the work occurred, fixed or post-individuated stable entity, might be seen to imply a world moving from those preconceived by the but can be taken to be always in- inhabited by ideal, internally stable artist to a new shared and emergent process, corporeal and enactive rather objects, between which interactions agency developed through an than ‘the body’ in any coded sense [11]. occur. The interface’s role, in such interfacing of a public bringing their This is in sympathy with Deleuze and modes of thinking, is to rejoin entities own intentions and tonalities to the Guattari’s notion of a body as ‘a that are by implication discrete, and the event, I do not wish to overstate the discontinuous, non-totalized series of complexity of continued unfolding and uniqueness of the case. Certainly, as processes, organs, flows, energies, relation to the dynamic virtual or Lozano-Hemmer has said, the events corporeal substances and incorporeal potential is then greatly diminished. were significant in his rethinking of the events, intensities and durations’ [12]. There is indeed much to be critical of ways in which he staged further Similarly the term ‘technical object’ as in the privileging of the interface. As Relational architecture iterations [10], used here implies not a fixed object in Massumi notes, it can promote a naïve however this does not necessarily imply the material sense, but is used to address excitement in ‘the joy of connection’ that the occurrences were particularly a technical or non-biological entity that and undifferentiated flows of out of the ordinary for such large-scale is itself capable of becoming, leaving information, an unquestioning, utopian interventions, which are necessarily the term ‘machine’ open for another promotion of ‘interface, for interfaces’ always composed of multiple and often use. sake’ [4], that fits in perfectly with contradictory intentions and forces, and Machines, as Guattari tells us, are any Capitalist models of circulation and can potentially head in numerous systems that produce an effect; they surplus-value [5]. To this one might add directions, both predictable and function immanently and pragmatically Please reference as: [Author(s)-of-paper] (2013) [Title-of-paper] in Cleland, K., Fisher, L. & Harley, R. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Electronic Art, ISEA2013, Sydney. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/9475 Page numbering begins at 1 at the start of the paper. [13]. Massumi, in expanding on this viscosities, of formerly disparate things But in the case of Re:Positioning Fear, notion, explains that they are ‘not within a becoming-concrete system a more interesting and radical disruption subordinate to utility or laws of [22]. occurred in the unfolding of this work resemblance’ [14]. Guattari’s concept An art-event might be such a machine: (which was already primed for playful gives us three potentially useful ideas regulating and producing affectual intervention and evolution). It was in that help to expand the concept of the flows, a ‘machinic of expression rather this catalyzing moment when, through machine, in a decidedly non-humanist than a signifying apparatus’ [23], a parasitic action, a new and more direction. Firstly, the need for an producer of movement or difference complex machine was produced. understanding of the role that the wider [24]. This, I want to demonstrate, Alongside the positioning of their ecology in which technical objects are positions interfacing as a prime creative shadows on the façade to activate the embedded (or with which they unfold) force-form, for, as Deleuze states, hidden text, participants began to has in determining what potential is ‘difference, potential difference and synthesize a different work out of the actualized. Machines here are difference in intensity [is] the reason components by engaging specifically in ’proximity grouping[s]… [of] man-tool- behind qualitative diversity’ [25]. play between their projected silhouettes. animal’ [15]. Secondly, an Seeing interfacing as a machinic action Here they utilized the potential to understanding Guattari perhaps shares implies a shift in the design of art events radically alter the size of their shadows with Simondon that machines inherently to emphasis their machinic potential: to engage creatively with one another. contain potential beyond their their productive capacity or capability to For example, a wheelchair bound immediate actualization, ‘ontogenetic produce difference, rather than for their participant created a giant image of elements’ [16]. That is, they are held aesthetic qualities. It is this operation of himself and ran down everyone else together not so much by any physical the interface as a differential machine [30], while other participants played bond, but by a shared virtual milieu, as that the rest of this paper addresses with puppet mastering