Wednesday 29 January 2014

Spectatorship redux: why we need to re-understand the spectator and the spectacle


"I am going to watch a film," when this common statement is expressed, you are exerting a fundamental ignorance hardwired into the human intellect; yet, it is an ignorance that expresses a fundamental truth about our comprehension of the world and of our cultural artefacts therein. 

This post will examine the two very badly defined entities known as the 'spectator' and the 'spectacle'. Through exploring their inherent short-sighted fallacies, their usefulness will be determined in regards to attaining a thorough holistic understanding of spectatorship as a whole, our ways to interface and what we actually mean when we say: "I am going to watch a film."

 
 What is Spectatorship? 


The definition of the word 'spectatorship' indicates it as being "the state or quality of being a spectator."  


However, from an academic perspective, 'spectatorship' more commonly refers to the study of spectators and spectacles and their relation to each other. To this end, the essential purpose and aim of Ways 2 interface is the study of spectatorship.

The majority of writing, theory and thought on the study of spectatorship has typically been focused on the cinema and this is where Ways 2 Interface will deviate from traditional approaches of spectatorship.

Ultimately, gaining a thorough understanding of a spectator's relation to any kind of spectacle (film, theatre, painting, the guy who trips on his shoelace) requires a fundamental understanding of why the human intellect divides everything into spectators and spectacles. It is an essential constituent in us all and it has created the cultures we inhabit; to this end, when attempting to make sense of it, we need to consider a bigger picture.

Therefore, while still utilising its considerations and using them as a jumping on point, this project will look beyond the focus of film spectatorship and, through a holistic and transdisciplinary approach, Ways 2 Interface will study spectatorship in a much broader context, in relation to a wide variety of interfaces.

However, I loath to use the term 'spectatorship', because it defines everything that is problematic and shortsighted about the traditional treatment and considerations of the spectator and the spectacle; as do the terms 'spectator' and 'spectacle.' 



 What is a Spectator? 


Spectator

noun. 

A person who watches at a show, game, or other event: around fifteen thousand spectators came to watch the thrills and spills.


a.k.a.

onlooker, watcher, looker-on, fly on the wall, viewer, observer, witness, eyewitness, bystander, non-participant, sightseer; commentator, reporter, monitor, blogger, beholder, bystander, fan, moviegoer, observer, onlooker, sports fan, theatergoer, clapper, eyewitness, kibitzer, looker, looker-on, perceiver, playgoer, seer, standee, watcher, witness, gaper, gazer, showgoer, stander-by


You are a spectator of this spectator (and spectacle).



 What is a Spectacle? 


Spectacle

noun.

A visually striking performance or display: the acrobatic feats make a good spectacle.

[mass noun]: the show is pure spectacle an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact: the spectacle of a city’s mass grief.


 a.k.a.


display, show, performance, presentation, exhibition, pageant, parade, extravaganza, sight, vision, view, scene, prospect, vista, outlook, picture, exhibition, laughing stock, fool, curiosity, comedy, demonstration, display, drama, event, extravaganza, movie, pageant, parade, performance, phenomenon, scene, sight, spectacular, tableau, curiosity, exposition, marvel, play, production, representation, show, view, wonder


As is the photo... and this website... and your monitor... and the way YOU see your monitor in relation to whatever is around it...



 The Blindness of the Spectator and the Spectacle 


"I am going to watch a film." 

This statement is a falsehood, because we do not watch films and we never have. However, if you were to say I am going to watch and listen to a film, then you are getting closer to what is actually going on. 




“We watch films with our eyes and ears, but we experience films with our minds and bodies. Films do things to us, but we also do things with them. A film pulls a surprise; we jump. It sets up scenes; we follow them. It plants hints; we remember them. It prompts us to feel emotions”



If you wanted to be accurate, opposed to saying: "I am going to watch a film," you would say: "I am going to experience a film."

We do experience films and other forms of audio-visual content with our minds and our bodies and, in addition to experiencing them with our eyes and ears, we are also able to taste, smell and touch the larger experiences they enable and the brands they embody. 



What can you taste?


Whenever I experience Home Alone (1990) I always associate it with and get a huge craving for roast chicken, because many, many years ago I 'watched' the film while eating some absolutely scrumptious roast chicken. 

Whenever you eat popcorn, you taste a bit of the quintessential cinematic experience brand. Furthermore, taste is made up of the sensory input of your tongue and your nose, so you smell it as well. You have to use your hands to grasp each new handful of popcorn, so you find yourself touching it also.

Have you ever considered what effect the large sugar loaded and iced cooled Coke Cola sat in your cup holder is having on your film experience?


Not to mention the air conditioning:

"Today, technology has substantially improved the clarity of sound and the visibility of the screen. However, the quality of a show doesn’t depend solely on crystalline highs and rumbling lows. It is an integral well-being that comes from a comfortable setting where the rights temperature, the correct degree of humidity, and calibrated filtering and recirculation of air make the spectator completely comfortable."



The point I am trying to make is that:

  • no matter what form of content you are experiencing
  • no matter what device you are experiencing it through
  • no matter what location you are experiencing it in
  • no matter who you are experiencing it with
  • no matter what prejudices you bring to it
- everything that exists with you in that process of experiencing has some influence on the result of your overall experience.


Granted, some factors, such as the image and the sound, will have bigger influences, but everything is prevalent and should not be ignored when dissecting that experience.

The human body is just one huge sensory membrane.
Your body is always aware of its surroundings; you may not be consciously privy to everything your body is taking in, but your mind is processing that information and, even if subconsciously, it is having an effect on you and whatever situation in which you happen to find yourself. 

This realisation of a larger sensory input is something of which we are now becoming more and more aware and which is being commoditised accordingly. 


Hold on to your seat!

Yet this larger sensory input and its full implications on our ways of being spectators and spectacles is still not fully understood or even being examined to a large degree. Whenever, we utilise the terms 'spectator' and 'spectacle', or some other visual-centric equivalent, we are buying into this visual-centric ignorance. 


“One of the major fallacies of contemporary film theory has been to imply that spectatorship in the cinema is inherently voyeuristic. This emphasis on the cinema’s voyeuristic character results from an overvaluation of the role that vision plays in determining the emotional responses of the spectator”

- Richard Allen, Projecting Illusion, 1997:133


We take for granted what the conceptual constructs of these words imply and we use them carelessly. By focusing on the visual-centricity, that is encouraged by these terms, we are blinding ourselves to the bigger reality.



"The blood vessels that feed the receptor cells sit on top of the retina – between the light source and the receptive layer. The estimated prevalence rate for retinopathy, e.g. severe loss of sight, for US adults 40 years and older is about 50%. It is caused by proliferated blood vessels obstructing the light."

- Dr. Hugo Schouppe, Design Flaws in the Human Eye, 2012


We rely on sight so strongly and yet the human eye is hugely flawed, as is spectatorship's reliance on the concept of seeing and visual interpretation.  



 Visualising a Shortcut: Our Belief in Seeing 



However, while it will benefit us to realise the broader context of understanding beyond the 'spectator' and 'spectacle' terms, the fact that these visual-centric terms have become so prevalently used, both academically and non-academically, in the ways that we discuss both the academic and non-academic subject of spectatorship does actually tell us something fundamental about our ways of being.


"One third of your brain's cortex is engaged in vision; when you simply open your eyes and look around, you're using billions of neurons and trillions of synapses just to see the world"



This over-reliance on sight and seeing is hardwired into us; the fact that so much of our brains is utilised for it demonstrates that we have evolved with a high regard for the information that sight and internal visualisations can give us.
“The advent of spatial vision provided immense survival value to the creature that had it
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112908953/understanding-human-eye-origin-evolution-072913/#mFgFiEMR54sXYb4I.99


"The advent of spatial vision provided immense survival value for the creature that had it." 

- Trevor Lamb in Brett Smith, For Your Eyes Only: Understanding How Sight Evolved, 2013
“The advent of spatial vision provided immense survival value to the creature that had it — but the process occurred slowly, over countless steps, with the transition from a simple eye spot to the vertebrate-style camera eye possibly taking as long as 100 million years,” he concluded.
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112908953/understanding-human-eye-origin-evolution-072913/#mFgFiEMR54sXYb4I.99
“The advent of spatial vision provided immense survival value to the creature that had it
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112908953/understanding-human-eye-origin-evolution-072913/#mFgFiEMR54sXYb4I.99
“The advent of spatial vision provided immense survival value to the creature that had it
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112908953/understanding-human-eye-origin-evolution-072913/#mFgFiEMR54sXYb4I.99


Therefore, it can be argued that whenever we use the terms 'spectator' or 'spectacle' or say that: "I am going to watch a film," we use them in an almost pragmatic manner. 


Subconsciously, we know there is a greater complexity beneath what these terms are pointing towards, but we refer to the 'spectator' and 'spectacle' entities as visually-centric spectators and spectacles, because it is easier for our conscious intellects to understand them as such - it provides a summation that concisely prioritises the information we need in order to act productively in our everyday lives.


In the same way that if I were to find myself in a burning building, opposed to smelling, touching, tasting or hearing my way to safety, it is vastly easier for me to use my sight to navigate away from the flames. 

In truth, sight is our shortcut to comprehending the world:


"it gives a dumbed down, pretty guide to behaviour. It's guiding your behaviours so you can get done, what you need to do." 




In this post I have used images - a conscious being (me) who is observing a screen presenting a spectacle - to visualise the most basic definitions of the spectator and the spectacle. 


"What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are. Through experience and experimentation, we continually increase our understanding of the visual world and how we are influenced by it. Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is nonverbal. Studies find that the human brain deciphers image elements simultaneously, while language is decoded in a linear, sequential manner taking more time to process. Our minds react differently to visual stimuli."



We process visual information 60,000 times faster than text and, while the images are not a huge simplification of relatively easy to comprehend and widely known definitions, the images of the spectator and the spectacle could have been used without including the worded definitions, that take slightly longer for our brains to process. 

The research and our own habit of doing so demonstrates that humans have a visually prioritising tendency - we believe that seeing is believing.



 Do you believe what you see?


Therefore, In the same way that we use visual information to simplify the data of our world, the same is true of the spectator and the spectacle terms and our conventional tendency to see them as being purely visual in nature - they are conceptual visualisations/simplifications of something that is vastly more complicated

Audio-visual content, and cinema in particular, is a celebration of this visually prioritising and influencing fact inherent to our species, but, in the same way that the visuals of a film are not providing the full sensory stimulation of that film, regardless how much visual stimulation we may get from seeing, our sight is not telling us the full story of the world. 

93% of our communication is non-verbal, but that does not mean that the full 93% is devoted to sight alone; the other senses - smell, taste and touch - have to be factored in alongside the visual and audio aspects:

"7% of any message is conveyed through words, 38% through certain vocal elements, and 55% through nonverbal elements (facial expressions, gestures, posture, etc).  Subtracting the 7% for actual vocal content leaves one with the 93% statistic.

However, studying human behavior is a challenging task. The inherent flaws of social scientific research methodology combined with the incredible dynamic nature of human behavior make this specific quantification close to impossible.

The fact of the matter is that the exact number is irrelevant. Knowing that communication is specifically 75% nonverbal or 90% nonverbal holds no practical applications. The important part is that most communication is nonverbal. In fact, nonverbal behavior is the most crucial aspect of communication.

Based on my own research, I would state that the amount of communication that is nonverbal varies between 60 and 90% on a daily basis.  This number depends on both the situation and the individual."



The spectator and the spectacle are conceptual shortcuts that, like human sight, rarely ever tell the full truth of what we perceive. 




 The Usefulness of the Spectator and the Spectacle 

Simplifications they may be, but the lie of the spectator and the spectacle can tell us all an awful lot about the human being's inherent prejudice of seeing. 

While this over-reliance on sight might have benefited us from a survival and productive standpoint, it is not the full truth of our sensual relationship with the world or, indeed, how we further experience that world through the intricate cultural artefacts with which we have populated it.

Visualisation is objectification and that is exactly what we have done with the concepts of the spectator and the spectacle, we have tried to understand something about ourselves and our relation to the world - external to ourselves. 

Yet, the cold voyeuristic natures of the spectator and the spectacle have typically always lacked something vital in their endeavour of attaining an approximation of us - they have been devoid of us.


This is why it so important for us to re-understand the spectator and the spectacle, because, as they stand, they are only one part of a much bigger concept, a concept that requires objectivity and subjectivity in equal measure. 

At the moment, what we have with the conceptual simplifications of the 'spectator' and the 'spectacle' is an objectified perceived-being-without, but, in order to gain a thorough approximation of ourselves, and our relation to what we perceive as being without, we need to factor in ourselves as the subjective actual-being-within. 


I believe it is important to realise this bigger conception of our reality, because, as the two million year develop of our higher intelligence and our increasing ability to dissect the workings of reality has already demonstrated, just as much as we have an inherent reliance on our sight, we also have a fast growing inherent compulsion to transcend beyond it - to gain a greater intellectual understanding of our ways of being.

"a central truth about wilful blindness: we may think being blind makes us safer, when in fact it leaves us crippled, vulnerable and powerless. But when we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change."  

- Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness, 2012:5

This will not just benefit us from an academic point of view, but from creative and humanistic perspectives as well. I believe attaining a more thorough understanding of this subject will enable us to greatly increase the effectiveness of our creative endeavours and the way in which we live our lives.


In conclusion then, the 'spectator' and the 'spectacle' terms are not something that I am simply going to disregard or even stop using. When we study our relation to our world and to our cultural artifacts, the spectator and the spectacle are not irrelevant, but, on their own, their conceptual simplifications are not enough. To this end, in this project, I will be using them in a different context to the one that is widely understood. 

Furthermore, in the field of spectatorship studies as a whole, when we discuss the spectator and the spectacle, we need to set an example by discussing them in relation to a bigger reality.  A reality that incorporates vision, but ultimately transcends it. 

This area of study should not even be termed 'spectatorship' and until a more accurate term comes along, I will rely upon 'Spectatorship Redux'. The study of the actual-being-within-and-the-perceived-being-without and how the concept of an interface is at the root of this process, this is the central focus of Ways 2 Interface.

Welcome #2interface
@ways2interface
#2interface

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In the follow-up to this post, Consuming while being content: 'consumer' + 'content' = IDEAL?, I will build on what I have discussed here in relation to the digital age's contemporary updates of the spectator and the spectacle - 'consumer' and 'content' and ask what these two commonplace terms can tell us about our relationship and understanding of our world and of the cultural artifacts we have created therein...

Friday 17 January 2014

Welcome #2interface: Something New and Fantastic!


For Creatives, Brand Builders, Academics, Enterprisers and anyone who is interested in how their life is shaped by stories and how those stories are shaped.

From the bison sketched on the cave wall to the latest meme posted on the facebook wall, the interface of the spectator and the spectacle, a physical and cognitive intermingling of consumer and content, is an integral identity and reality constituting process, that quite literally tells the story of our universal and underlying ways of being.

Building on the award-winning research paper, 'Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle', in a continuing endeavour to reconceive the spectator and the spectacle as the-actual-being-within-and-perceived-being-without, 'Ways 2 Interface' is a progressively inclined transdisciplinary research project that reconsiders the study of the content and the consumer in relation to a wider spectrum of knowledge and considerations. 

The fundamental focus of the project is the idea of an interfacing process - the introspective and expressive capacity inherent to us all - that we have always interwoven throughout our day-to-day existences and that we continue to do so at a formidably greater capacity in our contemporary digital realities. 

By examining the habits and manifestations of our cognitive, corporeal, cultural and connected ways to interface, 'Ways 2 Interface' will aim to build a unified understanding of this interfacing process - the brand at the heart of all our stories.

We are the stories we tell ourselves, the key to understanding the purpose of the interfacing process is in realising both the deceits of the abstractions in which we constantly immerse ourselves and the ways in which we constantly immerse ourselves in the truths of those abstract deceits. 

From the two million year odyssey of our intellectual growth, to our current plugged in transmedia and transhuman digital re-birth, 'Ways 2 Interface' covers a lot of ground in its creative academic endeavour to ascertain how an interfacing habit has always driven our ways of being stories, how it can empower us to create better content, how it can enable us to embody better brand identities and what it can tell us about the transcendence of where our networked narrative is going...




 A Bit of Background 

Hello, you wonderful stories, my name is Peter O'Brien (that's me in the photo above), I am a freelance creator, writer, filmmaker and researcher based in Bristol, UK. I hold a First Class BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies. Accordingly, I have the temperament of a creative and an academic that is centred around an expertise concerned with the grey subject located somewhere between stories and film

a.k.a.

I have an expertise about how we make sense of the world through the stories we tell ourselves and what role the applications of mass entertainment and branding (film, being a prime example) play in this mass narratology.

a.k.a 

I have an expertise about our ways to interface.

The project that now finds itself branded as Ways 2 Interface, was originally initiated in October, 2012, with the research for my graduate theoretical dissertation: Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle. The research actually started even earlier, if you look at my pinterests (I could not resist). 

After a hugely exhausting, but educational, seven month period of creating Ways of Being, I had a Masters length paper that went on to receive a great deal of praise and the highest mark ever awarded to a Film and Screen Studies dissertation at Bath Spa University. Furthermore, it has been bestowed with the Media Futures Centre Research Award for Excellence in Film and Screen Studies research.


"This is a well researched, conceptually sound and cogently argued dissertation which is striking in its originality of argumentation and in its nuanced reading of a wide range of film and critical material.

It draws on a plethora of examples from traditions of visual culture from prehistoric cave art to contemporary film, the IMAX experience and future practices of audio‐visual consumption in order to examine traditional and contemporary theories of spectatorship and the spectator’s relation with the spectacle.

The introduction clearly sets out the structure and methodology of the dissertation and provides a useful overview of the technological shifts which have resulted in a reconfiguration of the relationship between the viewer and the viewed.

This is clearly an ambitious project.

It makes a passionate case for the revival of grand theory in studies of Spectatorship in particular and Film Studies in general and sustains this case through argumentation of an exceedingly high order.

It acknowledges the need to expand the scope of such studies beyond film, in its reference to a wide range of media texts as much as to critical literature, all of which are directed towards an understanding of spectatorship from points of view as diverse as the sensory, experiential, philosophical, spiritual, metaphysical and neurological."  




The Ways of Being project ignited such a fascination that I continued to conduct research even after I had submitted the final paper in June, 2013. There is still much to be said on this project's focus and it is my pleasure and my passion to say those things. 

Not long after deciding to continue the research, I hit on the novel idea of building a website based around that extended research; this was done in the spirit of trying something new and crazy, but also because of the influence of my EYES of a Storyteller blog/portfolio. 



A reflexive expression of contemporary networking attitudes and their implications on our ways of being, EYES is my graduate practical dissertation: an experimental web series concept proposal package comprised of a series bible, a pilot episode, a creative enterprise planning portfolio and the EYES of a Storyteller blog/portfolio that houses the entirety of the project's materials. This creative enterprise project was also awarded the highest mark of its module! 


"These materials are comprehensive and strong, showing a close attention to detail throughout... verging on the overwhelming, from an assessor's point of view."



In addition to serving as a commentary on our technologically networked world, the EYES proposal I presented (some of which I managed to demonstrate in the pilot episode) was of a storyworld where telepathy between certain characters was a reality. Through the application of this overriding telepathic story device and the way in which each charaters' point of view would have been reflexively fragmented through the web series' particular stylistic presentation, I conceived of a much more immersive experience between spectator and spectacle.

EYES would have amounted to an audio-visual Rubik cube that would have required the spectator to be much more actively involved in the experience of the web series. Alongside the characters grappling with the mysteries within the storyworld, the spectator would have had to arrange the overall EYES storyworld spectacle into the correct sequence in order to discern its true coherence, which would have been open to further subjective interpretations...



As they were orchestrated alongside each other, the considerations of the EYES project very much interfaced with those of Ways of Being. This can very much be evidenced in how I used the telepathically fragmented storytelling device of EYES as a means to explore the cognitive process at the root of how we interface as spectators and spectacles and how we piece our worlds together. 

Ultimately, in terms of aesthetic considerations and research focuses, EYES serves as a further progenitor for Ways 2 Interface. Phase 2 adopts an approach that is very much a fusion of the ones utilised by EYES and Ways of Being. More so than its predecessors, Ways 2 Interface will showcase the breadth and beneficial adavantages of my academic and creative inclinations.


 A Bit of Between 

Between now and June, 2013, I have been transitioning the research focus of the project into its next phase; while exploring the best logistical and aesthetically pleasing way in which to showcase my findings online. To this end, I have held off officially launching this website until I had the research and aesthetic focus of phase 2 fully pinned down. After many headaches, I now have the overall approach well and truly nailed. 


“I can't help but feel your careful consideration and reflection has developed formidable power. I wish that all my students had a fraction of your application and drive to dig deeper.”


Already I have a strong backlog of material, I have been writing content for the past three months. The batch of introduction posts that I have written both express how the research focus has developed from Ways of Being; as well as introducing the concepts that I really want to tackle throughout phase 2. 




Ways 2 Interface is only one strand of a larger life project and research web I have been building for a while now; there are a few other strands still waiting to be revealed, which I have been leaving to bake while I have been preparing this website. One strand that is already public is my blog: Something to do with Film

Up until now, my blog is something that I have not done much with mainly because it has lacked a clear focus; 'film' is a very broad term, all I knew is that my focus had something to do with film. Well, after a few years working away at it, I have come to realise what that something is - it is the grey subject located somewhere between stories and film 

a.k.a how we are stories and brands

Life writing has always interested me, but it has never really been something with which I have fully engaged, because I was never able to put my life in focus, until now. Like a well realised story, it just takes a little time. 

I am going to use Something to do with Film to tell my story and, through the course of doing so, use that story to define and refine my own brand. Everything falls under this brand and in the same way that Ways of Being and EYES built of off each other, the same will be true of Ways 2 Interface and Something to do with Film.



"That is so typical of you, that you work while you work."



When readying this site for its launch, I was finding it quite a challenge to write a single introduction post that conveyed an effective and concise overview of the breadth of the second phase's focus; therefore, each post of the introduction batch introduces a particular consideration of phase 2 and/or re-contextualises elements of phase 1 for their re-application in phase 2. The posting of these I will be spreading out over the next month or so. 

The order in which these introduction posts are posted may shift around and they may multiply. It is no secret that I do have a habit of writing vast amounts of material; Ways of Being was 20,000 words longer than it should have been and it is my aim to make its successor's posts as succinct as possible.

This current post I never intended to be the introduction post, but the actual intended introduction post still needed some work and I REALLY wanted to get the website launched this week. 

As an extra incentive I had banned myself from watching the final episode of series 3 of Sherlock until I had launched this site. Well, after five gruelling days, I want to watch Sherlock! Therefore, I have put together this quick preface post to enable me to officially launch the site.

I spent a week working on the intended introduction post and what have I learnt after very quickly knocking up this replacement? It is vastly superior! There is something to be said for the spontaneity of the intellect, this post has succinctly, logically and entertainingly presented all the ideas I needed it to introduce, almost like it was telling a story...


 A Bit of Things to Come 

A friend described Ways of Being as something new and fantastic and it is my aim to make Ways 2 Interface just so! 

“Pete, you have a fantastic dissertation which deserves the highest possible grade. Really, it is brilliantly written which displays your thorough research and passion for the topic and, most importantly, it is original and not something that people have written about tens of thousands of times. You've done something new and fantastic.” 


- Matt Coot, friend and fellow student.

Some of those new and fantastic things to come:

  • Spectatorship Redux: Why we need to re-understand the Spectator and the Spectacle
  • Consuming while being content: 'consumer' + 'content' = IDEAL?
  • Spectatorship Redux: What is an Interface?
  • Unfinished Business: The Story of the Interface
  • Interfacing Stories: Our Ways to Interface = Our Ways of Being 
  • An Ambitious Project: Reviewing the Spectator's Interfacing Relationship with the Spectacle 
  • The Digital Rebirth: From the Cave of Complacency to the Age of the Upgrade 
  • Film and Media Studies Redux: A Transdisciplinary Blogging Approach 
  • Ways 2 Research: The Research Approaches Employed 
  • The Interface: Reconsidering the Terminology and the Perspective of Understanding
  • The Network-Narrative: The implications of the World Wide Interface 
  • Something #2dowithfilm: The Path, The Story and The Research Web of Ways 2 Interface