Interstice
Polymorphic pause. Guilherme Silveira and Daniela Song, 2022.
“An interstice is a space in social relations which, although it fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the overall system, suggests possibilities for exchanges other than those that prevail within the system.”
— Nicolas Bourriaud, in Relational Aesthetics
Work. Email. Messaging. Discord servers.
We live through them anywhere, anytime of the day. Digital tools don’t get tired of stealing our time, but we do.
How can we bring the interstice which is a Museum or Gallery to everyday life and use “corporate” tools to retake our space and time? This is the premise of Interstice, a series of approaches to pausing.
Interstice: Link
Interstice as a link. Take a break to explore a new artist. Share with your co-workers before a call has started. Share the link with a friend.
“A work may operate like a relational device containing a certain degree of randomness, or a machine provoking and managing individual and group encounters.”
— Nicolas Bourriaud, in Relational Aesthetics
Subverting tech.
An URL is an address. A QR-Code is an address. Address are believed to uniquely identify a resource, so a human machine can find what it is looking for. But we refuse to do that. We will use fixed addresses to point to always moving, random artists. Interstice, as QR-Code is an exceptional machine generated image coined by humans for humans.
We see QR-Codes through human eyes, placed where machines will work for us.
Interstice: Tabs
Interstice as a thief.
Interstice Tabs is a browser extension that substitutes tabs not in use by random artists.
It steals back your focus, and gives you a break from the overwhelming strength of multiple tabs.
Suppose you have too many tabs in your browser. You believe you will come back to them, right? And they stay there, keeping you alert that you should be doing more, more, more than you are capable of?
But you don't come back to them. And nobody does. Let's prove it.
If a tab is left open but untouched for 24 hours, it will redirect to a random artist. If you ever need that tab again you can check it in your history. But if you did not for 24 hours, chances are you will not for the next 24.
Why 24 hours?
Why not? Just configure the amount of hours and minutes before the tab should give you a break and allow you to breathe, an interstice.— Quote Source
Interstice: QR-Code
Interstice as an intervention.
Replace real life existing QR-Codes with a Interstice one. Restaurants can have their QR-Codes quickly replaced.
Stick them in high cell phone usage spaces such as public bathroom doors. You shouldn’t be working while twoing.
Add them to your first and last presentation slide.
Before
After
“Cansado de pisar em fezes na calçada enquanto respondo email no celular, troco o celular por um livro.”
“Tired of stepping on feces on the sidewalk while answering emails on my cell phone, I switch my cell phone for a book.”
Cell phone high usage areas.
History
After reading The Burnout Society and while reading Relational Aesthetics, the term “Interstice” appeared. At the same time that I am reading my first philosophy of the arts book, I am questioning myself a few questions:
How can I make friends interact with my creations?
The museum curates and guards under locks. How can I open those cases?
How can I bring the creations out of the museum, into people’s lifes?
Obviously many art forms are executed, performed or displayed outside museum walls. How can we bring those and other type forms into people’s lifes? And how can we stop being slaves to our “productivity” ideals?
Interstice seemed like the perfect word to define this pause from life.
The first version of Interstice was a an automated bot that mutes all your twitter or linkedin friends, and suggests 5 artists for you to follow. It is a great idea but requires a lot of manual work. Twitter API does not allow mass mute. At the same time, it allowed me to cherry pick friends I want to keep following and Twitter became again a curated list of messages.
The second version is the NFC implementation. It allows me to keep two deck cards in my wallet, each one with a different NFC URL. When I move the card over someone doing cellphone stuff when they shouldn’t, it points them to a random artist. The other NFC points them to me, working as a greeting/introduction card.
The third version is the QR Code to glue on top of other QR Codes in real life, such as the ones found at restaurants and bathrooms. It disturbs
The fourth version is the same QR Code, but not applied at random places with high cell phone usage.
The fifth version appeared when I was trying to help friends solve their “too many tabs open for pseudo-productivity”. People tend to believe that by keeping dozens of open tabs they will come back to them at one point. It is the same as believing that keeping all your unfinished books open over your table would make you more productive reading the books because “I am going to read them”. Yes, we know you are. We try to not accept that our beliefs of productivity are fragile and are actually related to a false sensation of productivity regarding multitasking. Interstice Tabs solve that by showing you that you are not using that tab, and you can make better use of that space.