Protest and Aesthetics in The Metainterface Spectacle Christian Ulrik Andersen, Søren Bro Pold Dept. of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University Aarhus, Denmark cua@cc.au.dk, pold@cavi.au.dk Abstract The article asks how political agency play out in contempo- rary uses of the interface. It, firstly, stipulates that the inter- face is a ‘spectacle’, belonging to a longer history of media spectacles, mass organization, politics and aesthetics. Sec- ondly, that contemporary interfaces are metainterfaces, de- pending on a new organization of the masses characterized by mass profiling. Finally, it analyses how this play out in exam- ples from art and cultural practices, and speculates on what political protest and revolution is in light of the interface. Keywords Digital art, interface criticism, media aesthetics, media spec- tacle, political protest. Introduction A spectacle is commonly understood as something that vis- ually attracts our attention – typically a mediated experi- ence. It is an object of desire that naturally lends itself to not only pleasure, but also manipulation. Media spectacles have therefore always been a central part of Marxist cultural crit- icism, ranging from Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer to Guy Débord, and be- yond; and they have always been a contested zone for polit- ical struggle – for propaganda as well as for activism and situationist happenings. In this tradition of cultural critique, a spectacle presents an organization of the masses, but also a way for the individual to experience one-self as part of the masses. This can be used for populist manipulation, but po- tentially also opens up for critical reflection on the media- tized organization of the masses. In other words, the media spectacle is historically tied to relations of power and con- trol; of control of the masses, but also of the individual to see and understand one’s one position in the masses and thereby assume individual agency. Try to think of the user interface as a contemporary spec- tacle that organizes and controls the masses, and also of the user’s possibilities to experience this organization, and the possible agencies that relate to this. Arguably, the organiza- tion of the masses is a complex question. The interface spec- tacle is not only visually organized, as in traditional cinema and mass media, but belongs to a tradition of statistics that has roots in urban mass control as well as in advertisement – a tradition of data and profiling. As we have described elsewhere, the contemporary user interface must be seen as a ‘metainterface’: an interface that both seals off and gives access to a larger network of interfaces that exchange data; typically to profile the user and deliver customized experi- ences. It is an interface that is general (in everything), and abstract (nowhere in particular), and which is often associ- ated with the proliferation of platforms, apps, cloud compu- ting, and other phenomena. [1] In this article we want to discuss the contemporary inter- face spectacle through examples of organization of the masses in a networked computational reality. More specifi- cally, we ask: how does political agency play out in the con- temporary metainterface spectacle? This question takes us beyond the use of seemingly innocent apps for divertisse- ment, and into the question of how the spectacle is used po- litically – how its representations and collections of data are used for populist propaganda, as well as for critical scrutiny and other forms of agencies. This is not least relevant in light of political developments as displayed on Capitol Hill in January 2021, or in global nation politics where e.g., Russia has been accused of collecting data and profiling users in order to influence the outcome of elections. How does the metainterface serve such populist spectacles, and what po- tential forms of critical agencies may rise in this? In search for possible answers, we discuss the so-called twitter-revo- lutions in light of more recent events and uses of social me- dia; in particular the artistic performance HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US. The work is one of the most high-profile political artworks of recent years, and we ana- lyze how its protest against the Trump presidency, and the responses to this carried out by the Alternative Right move- ment, brings the relation between aesthetics and politics to the fore. Finally, we also compare the ‘ideal’ twitter-revolu- tion to other perceptions of the revolution as presented in Amira Hanafi’s work A Dictionary of the Revolution; a work that presents a quite different interpretation of the Egyptian revolution than its often-acclaimed association with social media. The media spectacle Before we enter more deeply into analysis, we want to begin by briefly touch upon the nature of the spectacle. Histori- cally, the spectacle, as a view on and of the masses, involves a particular political agency related to the increased urbani- zation and rise of the masses following industrialization, as seen for instance in George-Eugène Haussmann’s transfor- mation of Paris into boulevards with views to see, be seen, and be controlled. In Haussmann’s 19 th Century Paris the boulevards did not only provide new urban experiences of strolling, Paris was also a city mapped out and controlled from above, and a city that was designed to control the masses (related to Paris’ history of upheaval of the masses).