Towards the Aesthetics of the Instrumental Medium

Frieder Nake (5) has described the computer as an instru-mental medium. We use it instrumentally as a tool or an automaton while communicating with it as a medium. This constant shifting between the instrumental use and the communicational and representational functions of the me-dium is inherent to most computer applications – even computer games and net.art have a functional dimension related to navigation, interaction and functions such as "save", "open " or "print", while functional software tools also have representational dimensions, often as an intrinsic part of the very metaphor(s) behind the software design. While one can with good reason argue, that HCI until re-cently has focused too narrowly on the functional dimen-sion, where the computer as a visible medium was sup-posed to disappear, the current aesthetic turn to some exten