Project 4

For this project, I created an interface structure which explores the concept of a 'portal' in a software context, specifically the idea of a patient/health portal, as a literal apparatus for fantastical interfacing. I was interested in creating a structure which expanded upon ideas about theatrification and interface as a means and end unto itself as we had discussed in our lectures; and I sought to find the interweavings of fantasy, obsolescence, and absurdity in the context of containers for storing and navigating forms of knowledge. Building off this approach, I wanted to explore how the properties of simulation and mimicry present in skeuomorphism could become pushed to their logical extremes in a manner which called such pointed attention to their theatricality and surreal imitation that they became their own visual language separate from their literal reality or the things which they suggest. I liken this to the concept of a phone becoming aesthetically transformed into being a "Thing" as discussed in Reading 3 from Lev Manovich. I also played with the ideas of creating a mash-up by taking the elements of software design most seemingly iconic in mobile and web design for my references, as well as combining structural interfaces that are designed to logically contain and express medical data with the highly stylized internet magic of early interfaces and their fascination with gloss, bubbles, and highly beveled and textured containment.