Metainterface

Paradigm where the computer’s interface seemingly becomes both omnipresent and invisible, at once embedded in everyday objects and characterized by hidden exchanges of information between objects and networks
Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold 2025-11-04

Explication

There are many different definitions of interface; the notion of metainterface rests on an understanding of the interface developed from computer semiotics and software studies. In computer semiotics, the understanding of the computer interface refers to situations where human systems of signs and representation intersect with computational processes of signals (Nake). Commonly, interfaces are experienced as graphical user interfaces on screens, but as pointed out by software studies scholars, numerous other interfaces make a computational system function. There are interfaces between humans and computers; there are voice-based interfaces. There are also interfaces between layers of software, such as the interface between a computer’s operating system and the running software application. Additionally, interfaces exist between software and hardware—for example, the interface in a printer that detects and validates data when printing—or between one hardware component and another, such as a USB socket, a serial port, or a wireless network (Cramer and Fuller). The networked computer therefore does not have one interface but is a conglomerate of interfaces – from deep machine levels to human levels of representation. At all levels, interfaces carry with them a politics of regulation and embed cultural values (Distelmeyer; Drucker).

The sign/signal interrelation and the many levels of interfaces are important for an understanding of the metainterface. The metainterface transcends the traditional boundaries of the interface, e.g., the graphical user interface. Rather than simply connecting humans with computers, the metainterface emphasizes that the world of computing cannot be neatly divided into separate user interfaces. As a concept, it tries to capture how a global network of interfaces acts and acts upon us, constantly and everywhere (Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold The Metainterface). In this way, the metainterface refers to how cloud computing, platforms, and generative AI work with profiling, data capture, and data processing, and how this is typically presented to the user as an individualized interface to massified data. This could be reels or news feed in social media, suggested products in a search engine, suggestions in a media streaming platform, people to connect with in social or professional networking, or dashboard visualizations of data and insights in business intelligence software (Tkacz).

The metainterface is experienced as being everywhere and nowhere, making it difficult to pin down; along with it comes a loss of narrative transparency. To ordinary users of monopolistic platforms closed to public inspection, transparency has long been lost. As we are gradually moving away from a conventional hypertextual writing space (Nelson) towards dynamic texts of platforms, multi-authored texts of social media, and generated texts of large language models, the writing space becomes increasingly abstract, and it becomes increasingly difficult to understand how the text is generated and from what. Whereas inspecting the source code of a platform interface, for example, once revealed what was presented to the user, it now reveals very little (Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold; Moll). Likewise, the interfaces of generative AI involve so-called connectionist AI, meaning that the generation of text is based on models that are trained using machine learning, rather than through programming of text. It is simply no longer possible, even for a programmer, to read the code or “infer the underlying rules by running the program” (Bajohr 220).

Contemporary digital narratives both reflect the loss of narrative transparency and use the metainterface as a channel for literary experimentation–exploring, for example, how to write collaboratively with AI, examine its style, analyze its gendered, racist and other biases, or understand the kind of narratives and texts it generates (Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold “The User as a Character”; Bajohr “On Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts”; Erslev; Rettberg; Scourti; Walker Rettberg). Operating within the restrictions of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) or the terms of service, for instance, they often also reflect the business model of the metainterface that seems to capitalize not just on what is written in these spaces, but on language itself (Cayley; Grosser; Ritasdatter), and how the metainterface functions as a new cultural industry (Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold The Metainterface).

Digital narratives also make way for whole new understandings of the massive impacts on our climate and environment that the infrastructures of the metainterface cause – of media as material constructs (Valk). The boundless use of resources is imperative: from the exploitation of labor in training algorithms, to the mining of costly minerals for smartphones, to the energy used by ‘the cloud’ and edge devices on the network. One might even argue that the environment itself becomes a medium, where the metainterface’s use of resources manifests as changes in the landscape or in the biosphere – potentially as a narrative or art object in and of itself (Gil-Fournier and Parikka). As a ‘meta’ construction and abstraction, the metainterface tends to hide these material conditions.

See Also

• Digital Narrative - Form of storytelling driven by algorithmic narrativity, inflected and mediated by computation, or the context of ubiquitous technological networks

Works Referenced

Andersen, Christian Ulrik and Søren Pold. The Metainterface: The Art of Platforms, Cities and Clouds. MIT Press, 2018.

Andersen, Christian Ulrik and Søren Bro Pold. “A.Username? – a Profile without Qualities: Exploring Amazon through Art and Literature.” Practicing Sovereignty: Digital Involvement in Times of Crises. Transcript Verlag, 2021, https://www.transcript-publishing.com/media/pdf/66/b3/2a/oa9783839457603.pdf.

Bajohr, Hannes. “Algorithmic Empathy: Toward a Critique of Aesthetic Ai.” Configurations, vol. 30, no. 2, 2022, pp. 203-31, doi:https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2022.0011.

“On Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts: Machine Learning and the Reader’s Expectations of Literary and Non-Literary Writing.” Poetics Today, vol. 45, no. 2, 2024, pp. 331-61, doi:10.1215/03335372-11092990.

Cayley, John. “Terms of Reference & Vectoralist Transgressions: Situating Certain Literary Transactions over Networked Services.” Amodern, no. 2.

Cramer, Florian and Matthew Fuller. “Interface.” Software Studies: A Lexicon, MIT, 2008, pp. 149-53.

Distelmeyer, Jan. “Drawing Connections – How Interfaces Matter.” Interface Critique, vol. 1, 2018, DOI: 10.11588/ic.2018.0.44733.

Drucker, Johanna. “Humanities Approaches to Interface Theory.” Culture Machine, vol. 12, 2011.

Erslev, Malthe Stavning. Bot-Mimicry in Digital Literary Culture: Imitating Imitative Software. Cambridge University Press, 2024. Elements in Publishing and Book Culture Cambridge Core, https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/1B54F96E860F0B72DCCB2897636489B8.

Gil-Fournier, Abelardo and Jussi Parikka. Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media. MIT Press, 2024. Leonardo.

Grosser, Ben. “What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook.” Computational Culture, no. 4, 2014.

Moll, Joana. “Behind and Beyond: Tracking Narratives and Users’ Awareness.” Whistleblowing for Change: Exposing Systems of Power and Injustice, vol. 38, Transcript Verlag, 2021, pp. 165-74. Digitale Gesellschaft.

Nake, Frieder. “Human-Computer Interaction: Signs and Signals Interfacing.” Languages of Design, vol. 2, 1994, pp. 193-205.

Nelson, Theodor H. “Computer Lib / Dream Machines.” The New Media Reader, MIT Press, 2003 (1974/1987), pp. 301-38.

Rettberg, Jill Walker. Machine Vision: How Algorithms Are Changing the Way We See the World. 2023.

Rettberg, Scott. “Cyborg Authorship: Writing with Ai – Part 1: The Trouble(S) with Chatgpt.” Electronic Book Review, 2 July, 2023, doi:https://doi.org/10.7273/5sy5-rx37.

Ritasdatter, Linda Hilfling. Unwrapping Cobol : Lessons in Crisis Computing. Malmö Universitet, 2020.

Scourti, Erica. The Female Fool: Subversive Approaches to the Techno-Social Mediation of Femininity. MRes Art: Moving Image, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, 2013.

Tkacz, Nathaniel. Being with Data: The Dashboarding of Everyday Life. Polity Press, 2022.

“The User as a Character: Narratives of Datafied Platforms.” Computational Culture, no. 8, 2021.

Valk, Marloes de. “Interview with Joana Moll.” unthinking photography. Photographers’ Gallery https://unthinking.photography/articles/interview-with-joana-moll.

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