ABSTRACT
43In this chapter, urban screens are approached as urban interfaces. This does justice to the social (“inter-”) and dynamic (“-ing”) aspects ofinterfacing—both in time (historically, temporarily, and generatively) and in place (site-specific, situated, and situating). It unites their architectural materiality with their performative mediality. With interfacing as a concept, we can theorize not only how both presence and mobility are conditions for intra-active, relational and generative forms of access, participation, and exchange. It specifically inquires how they are always limited, frictional, or contested. Their very possibilities raise questions about their spatiotemporal materiality (what they are) and their performative mediality (what they do). As such, the “urban interface” is both an object and a concept, or an object-concept.
