Over the last two years of the (ongoing) pandemic we have become more and more familiar with the space of our desktops. In the first few months of 2020 just doom scrolling and waiting to see how bad it became, but then as a means to carry on connections as the real world closed down.
Our desktops, laptop, desktop or phone became our workspace, meeting point, lifeline and entertainment, our desktops became our lived reality.
In that process of using how many of us started to notice annoyances, updates, quirks of design? How certain operating systems guided us to make choices of software and methodology with built in bias or not so subtle adware, or how through the structure of menu, icon and choice of file manager we realised we are all now administrators constantly juggling the search for lost files, the inconvenience of constant updates and the ever present fear of losing connection whilst looking for that one vital piece of information or that one application that has suddenly gone missing and we need to complete a vital task.
This rabbithole reflects the corporate origin and destination of most of the software repurposed for home use, how did we come to this state of cubicle dweller orientated software that both reflected the times of the pandemic and the mindset of those who designed it. How can we break out of those inbuilt constraints and make this software performative and meaningful, to make art from and in this space?
In other words as 'This is not a desktop' is to 'this is not a Pipe' what then is it ?
