Wimp, artfully manipulated windows.

Wimp

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Wimp, Windows Interface Manipulation Program, Victor Laskin, Alexei Shulgin

19.11.04 Wimp, artfully manipulated windows.


The graphical points of reference on the screen are fundamental for our interaction habits and their tendence to change at every new release of the operating system implies an unconscious neural reprogramming to adjust our gestures to the machine. Wimp reshuffles the cards from a conceptual and playful perspective. It’s a software to manipulate the Windows user interface which allows to build visual remixes of the desktop and the windows on it, in a whirlwind of levels and a mulltitude of filters. Treating the interface as the only input makes the aesthetical loop irreversible, and ultimately challenges the dogmas of human-machine communication. In fact, even the name hints at the many levels of this work: it’s an acronym of both “Windows Interface Manipulation Program” and “Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer”, that is, the way programs with a graphical user interface were designated in the Seventies. Made by Victor Laskin and Alexei Shulgin, it’s branded as a vjing software (or screensaver, or software art work, you choose) and technically requires a PC equipped with Windows 2000 or XP and a 3D graphical accelerator powerful enough to calculate the effects, and it’s distributed as freeware.