Overview

To suggest the generous scope of our approach to the question of the interface, here is the definition of "interface" offered by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

A surface forming a common boundary between adjacent regions, bodies, substances, or phases. A point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact: "the interface between crime and politics where much of our reality is to be found" (Jack Kroll). Computer Science. The point of interaction or communication between a computer and any other entity, such as a printer or human operator.

Our conference title "Interfacing Knowledge" most obviously invokes the third of these meanings, the special meaning given "interface" by computer science, as a point of contact "between a computer and any other entity, such as a printer or human operator." Because a computer is necessarily experienced through software, the human-computer interface is
apparently open to endless rewriting. For this reason, the computer-human interface has seemed, when compared with most physical and socio-political interfaces, uniquely open to reconfiguration and radical redesign. This may help explain the utopian expectations and creative ferment evident in the last half century of computer-human interface design.

The first two meanings of interface, however, usefully suggest how the interface can be a zone of difference and potential conflict: first, the interface is a surface or boundary between discrete physical regions, bodies, substances, and so forth. The interface is thus that which simultaneously serves as a boundary and a bridge, which protects and threatens the integrity of each interfacing entity. When we move from a physical to a social register, the interface becomes a point or surface where "independent systems" or "diverse groups" act upon each other, or "interact." This reciprocal agency involve a range of activities, from civil communication and cooperation, to negotiation, contention, or even war. Embedded within the technical practice of interface design, one glimpses the "faces" behind or within the interface. The physical and social interfaces subsist within the technical definition of interface indexed by our conference, "Interfacing Knowledge."

This brief rehearsal of the meanings of "interface" helps to suggest the wide range of questions opened by the interface, and the act of "interfacing" knowledge. This conference approaches the term "knowledge" in an equally broad manner, as befits a university-oriented conference. We seek to explore the diverse university discourses that involve theproduction, storage and distribution of knowledge, the various epistemological practices that characterize how knowledge is understood to be structured and therefore to function. Artists, humanists, computer scientists, social scientists and others all approach issues of knowledge and how we interface it in idiosyncratic fashions, yet we all participate in a single institutional community. It is perhaps more accurate to speak of "knowledges"rather than the more abstract and utopian "knowledge" in the singular. We hope this conference itself can serve as an interface that helps us question and make better sense of how we engage with one another intellectually, socially and politically. The way we work with and within the interface engages the many fraught ways that our society at large negotiates what constitutes legitimate knowledge in such realms as politics, economics, law, and popular culture.

To find out more information, please visit: The Digital Cultures Conference Website.