The interface envelope
Subtitle: gaming, technology, power
By: James Ash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 167
ISBN-13: 9781623564599; 9781623565572; 9781623569754
Subjects: Video games; Psychological aspects; Design; User interfaces (Computer systems); SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies; TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / General; PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Phenomenology
Description: "In The Interface Envelope, James Ash develops a series of concepts to understand how digital interfaces work to shape the spatial and temporal perception of players. Drawing  upon examples from videogame design and work from post-phenomenology, speculative realism, new materialism and media theory, Ash argues that interfaces create envelopes, or localised foldings of space time, around which bodily and perceptual capacities are organised for the explicit production of economic profit. Modifying and developing Bernard Stiegler's account of psychopower and Warren Neidich's account of neuropower, Ash argues the aim of interface designers and publishers is the production of envelope power. Envelope power refers to the ways that interfaces in games are designed to increase users perceptual and habitual capacities to sense difference. Examining a range of examples from specific videogames, Ash identities a series of logics that are key to producing envelope power and shows how these logics have intensified over the last thirty years. In turn, Ash suggests that the logics of interface envelopes in videogames are spreading to other types of interface. In doing so life becomes enveloped as the environments people inhabit becoming increasingly loaded with digital interfaces. Rather than simply negative, Ash develops a series of responses to the potential problematics of interface envelopes and envelope power and emphasizes their pharmacological nature"--

"Develops the new theory of 'interface envelope': how interfaces produce envelopes of space and time that serve to focus users' perception on the present moment"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-162) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 1.1 Attention, Economy, Power 1.2 Post-Phenomenology and New Materialism 1.3 Media, Software and Game Studies 1.4 Chapter outlines 2. Interface 2.1 Interface theory 2.3 Interfaces as Environments 2.4 Interface, Object, Transduction 3. Resolution 3.1 Resolution 3.2 Neuropower 3.3 High and low Resolution 3.4 Phasing between resolutions 3.5 Resolution, Habit, Power 4. Technicity 4.1 Technicity 4.2 Psychopower 4.3 Homogenization 4.4 Irreversibility 4.5 Technicity, Time, Power 5. Envelopes 5.1 Homeomorphic Modulation 5.2 Envelope Power 5.3 Shifting Logics of the Envelope in Games Design 5.4 The Contingency of Envelopes 6. Ecotechnics 6.1 The Ecotechnics of Care 6.2 Ecotechnics of Care: two sites of transduction 6.3 From suspended to immanent ecotechnical systems of care 6.4 The Temporal Deferral of Negative Affect 7. Envelope Life 7.1 Gamification 7.2 Non-gaming interface envelopes 7.3 Questioning Envelope Life 7.4 Pharmacology 8. Conclusions 8.1 Games / Digital Interfaces 8.2 Objects / New materialism / Envelopes 8.3 Power / Economy / Capitalism Bibliography Index.