In his talk, Enrique Tomás will examine non-linguistic approaches to interface design as an alternative to the long history of representationalism in art and music. Referencing the models from human-computer interation (HCI) labs, Tomás proposes a critical evaluation of the traditional mechanisms of user-centered, task-driven and goal-oriented approaches to interface design. These interfaces, a collection of related symbols with a given and arbitrary meaning, should be understood eminently as linguistic technologies, but, more importantly, they are usually decoupled from our cognition of embodied artifacts.

With examples from his own practice, Tomás argues that a performative understanding of writing digital music, which shifts the focus from linguistic and visual representations to discursive practices, is one such alternative for suggesting new practices of interface design.

Presented with Native Instruments and the ENCAC and SHAPE platforms, which are co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.