Transparency as a Functional and Visual Tool. The GUI of the Windows 10 Operating System as an Example

Transparency mediates between a body and light, and the surrounding multidirectional reality, and then their observer, that is, at the meeting point of various physicalities. Transparency suggests an existence of a hidden depth which adds a mysterious and magical dimension. Transparency exists mainly at the surface level (signifiant), within arm’s reach, thus it is controllable. Unlike the depth of the message (signifié), which, when obscured, creates an inaccessible, hidden impression. Transparency in the digital environment becomes a medium with the laws of technology applied to it – as an activity and a tool for effective communication and use. Transparency is therefore considered as an operational category – accompanying the process of generating and using a message – and an instrument – supporting software. Both types of transparency mutually condition each other at different levels of the digital world – operating systems, applications, websites, search engines and web browsers, etc. The last version of Windows offers various forms of GUI transparency at the hardware level in terms of operating, and at the software level in terms of functionality and aesthetics, where aesthetics is connected with the literal visualisation effect and the mental building of structures. Transparencies conduct, at various levels of their saturation, a kind of multi-level game: between their form and the content hidden behind it, visible and invisible, an illusion and a disillusion, materialisation and dematerialisation, self-reality and reality existing beyond it, finally between itself and recipients, forcing them to specific perceptions, reactions, behaviours, and valuations.