New paper: the design of transparency.

Loup Cellard (PhD Student, CIM) and Anthony Masure (Université de Toulouse) published together an article entitled "Le design de la transparence. Une rhétorique au coeur des interfaces numériques" in a special issue on the tyrannies of transparency, edited by Emmanuel Alloa and Yves Citton, of Multitudes.

Abstract of the paper (in english) :

"Historically, one of design’s objectives was to make the world intelligible by structuring the mediation of the visible. Such an operation of selection necessarily runs against a (transparent) understanding of the real, as fantasized by mathematical computation. Computation spread through digital interfaces which become unavoidable mediators of any form of human activity. As a consequence, design finds itself trapped between three double-binds, which this article attempts to investigate and overcome."

The paper can be downloaded here.