In semiotic terms, the computer interface acts as a code which carries
cultural messages in a variety of media. When you use the Internet,
everything you access - texts, music, video, navigable spaces - passes
through the interface of the browser and then, in its turn, the
interface of the OS. In cultural communication, a code is rarely simply
a neutral transport mechanism; usually it affects the messages
transmitted with its help. It may make some messages easy to conceive
and render others unthinkable. A code may also provide its own model of
the world, its own logical system, or ideology; subsequent cultural
messages or whole languages created using this code will be limited by
this model, system or ideology. Most modern cultural theories rely on
these notions. For instance, according to Whorf-Sapir hypothesis which
enjoyed popularity in the middle of the twentieth century, human
thinking is determined by the code of natural language; the speakers of
different natural languages perceive and think about world differently.
Whorf-Sapir hypothesis is an extreme expression of "non-transparency of
the code" idea; usually it is formulated in a less extreme form. But
then we think about the case of human-computer interface, applying a
"strong" version of this idea makes sense.

The interface shapes how the computer user conceives the computer
itself. It also determines how users think of any media object accessed
via a computer. Stripping different media of their original
distinctions, the interface imposes its own logic on them. Finally, by
organizing computer data in particular ways, the interface provides
distinct models of the world. For instance, a hierarchical file system
assumes that the world can be organized in a logical multi-level
hierarchy. In contrast, a hypertext model of the World Wide Web models
the world as a non-hierarchical system ruled by metonymy. In short, far
from being a transparent window into the data inside a computer, the
interface bring with it strong messages of its own.

As an example of how the interface imposes its own logic on media,
consider "cut and paste" operation, standard in all software running
under modern GUI. This operation renders insignificant the traditional
distinction between spatial and temporal media, since the user can cut
and paste parts of images, regions of space and parts of a temporal
composition in exactly the same way. It is also "blind" to traditional
distinctions in scale: the user can cut and paste a single pixel, an
image, a whole digital movie in the same way. And last, this operation
also renders insignificant traditional distinctions between media: "cut
and paste" can be applied to texts, still and moving images, sounds and
3D objects in the same way.

If human-computer interface become a key semiotic code of the
information society as well as its meta-tool, how does this affect the
functioning of cultural objects in general and art objects in
particular? In computer culture it becomes common to construct the
number of different interfaces to the same "content." For instance, the
same data can be represented as a 2D graph or as an interactive
navigable space. Or, a Web site may guide the user to different versions
of the site depending on the bandwidth of her Internet connection.

Given these examples, we may be tempted to think of a new media artwork
as also having two separate levels: content and interface. Thus the old
dichotomies content - form and content - medium can be re-written as
content - interface. But postulating such an opposition assumes that
artwork's content is independent of its medium (in an art historical
sense) or its code (in a semiotic sense). Situated in some idealized
medium-free realm, content is assumed to exist before its material
expression. These assumptions are correct in the case of visualization
of quantified data; they also apply to classical art with its well-
defined iconographic motives and representational conventions. But just
as modern thinkers, from Whorf to Derrida, insisted on "non-transparency
of a code" idea, modern artists assumed that content and form can't be
separated. In fact, from the 1910s "abstraction" to the 1960s "process,"
artists keep inventing concepts and procedures to assure that they can't
paint some pre-existent content.

This leaves us with an interesting paradox. Many new media artworks have
what can be called "an informational dimension," the condition which
they share with all new media objects. Their experience includes
retrieving, looking at and thinking about quantified data. Therefore
when we refer to such artworks we are justified in separating the levels
of content and interface. At the same time, new media artworks have more
traditional "experiential" or aesthetic dimensions, which justifies
their status as art rather than as information design. These dimensions
include a particular configuration of space, time, and surface
articulated in the work; a particular sequence of user's activities over
time to interact with the work; a particular formal, material and
phenomenological user experience. And it is the work's interface that
creates its unique materiality and the unique user experience. To change
the interface even slightly is to dramatically change the work. From
this perspective, to think of an interface as a separate level, as
something that can be arbitrary varied is to eliminate the status of a
new media artwork as art.

There is another way to think about the difference between new media
design and new media art in relation to the content - interface
dichotomy. In contrast to design, in art the connection between content
and form (or, in the case of new media, content and interface) is
motivated. That is, the choice of a particular interface is motivated by
work's content to such degree that it can no longer be thought of as a
separate level. Content and interface merge into one entity, and no
longer can be taken apart.

[This essay is excerpted from the forthcoming book "The Language of New
Media" (MIT Press, Fall 2000).]