Ken Pfeuffer – The Growing Complexity of Everyday Devices
Ken Pfeuffer from Aarhus University discusses his decade-long research on human-computer interaction using eye-tracking technology to address the growing complexity of managing multiple devices.
Inspired by a personal moment in London, he developed the concept of integrating eye-gaze with hand gestures to create interaction paradigms that work across all devices—past, present, and future. His research explores how eye tracking can enhance control of smartphones, computers, and emerging extended reality devices by combining visual attention with manual input. The work aims to create more intuitive interfaces as people increasingly juggle smartwatches, phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, and smart home appliances simultaneously. Pfeuffer emphasizes that while new device categories emerge, previous technologies don’t disappear, leading to increasing interaction complexity that requires novel solutions.
Mariusz Pisarski – A postcard from (hyper) reality
Mariusz Pisarski presents the concept of “hyperreality” in the context of hypertext and digital literature, exploring how reality itself is becoming increasingly layered and mediated through technology.
His presentation examines the blurring boundaries between physical and digital realities, suggesting that we now inhabit a hyperreal environment where text and technology create new forms of experience and perception. He discusses how contemporary digital culture transforms our understanding of reality through interconnected, non-linear textual experiences that mirror the structure of hypertext itself. The presentation connects philosophical concepts of hyperreality with practical implications for how we read, write, and experience narrative in digital spaces.
Lyle Skains – When Cut, It Multiplies: Hydraen Perspectives and Archontic Sprawl in Digital Narrative
Lyle Skains explores the hydra-like nature of digital narratives, where cutting or fragmenting a story doesn’t destroy it but multiplies it into new forms and perspectives.
Using the concept of “archontic sprawl,” she examines how digital narratives grow and expand through multiple authorial voices, versions, and interpretations, similar to how the mythical hydra grows new heads when one is severed. Her presentation addresses how digital media enables stories to exist simultaneously in multiple forms, with different perspectives and iterations that proliferate rather than replace each other. This multiplicity challenges traditional notions of singular, authoritative narratives and embraces the generative, ever-expanding nature of digital storytelling. Skains demonstrates how digital platforms facilitate collaborative, evolving narratives that resist closure and continue to spawn new variations.
Vincent Murphy – Twilight of the Printocene & the Dawn of Ludicity
Vincent Murphy presents a sweeping historical argument about the transition from print culture (“Printocene”) to a new era of “ludicity” driven by AI and interactive media.
He argues that the printing press fundamentally shaped modern institutions—economics, corporations, Protestant work ethic, paper money, contracts—and that we are now experiencing a similarly transformative moment with AI. Murphy contends that most people throughout history lived in poverty with no artistic opportunities, and that the printing press enabled new forms of creative work and economic structures. He suggests that AI will similarly revolutionize human activity, potentially freeing people from drudgery and creating new forms of work and creativity that we cannot yet conceptualize. In response to concerns about AI making humanity redundant, Murphy argues that technology has historically expanded human possibility rather than diminishing it, though he acknowledges we cannot fully envision what the post-print, ludic future will look like. The presentation includes discussions about literacy, the layering of technological capabilities, and the need for historical perspective on technological transformation.