Artware

I often mull over the question of artistry and development in the dimmer parts of the night when my software designs feel especially uninspired or vapid. I find myself in an endless logical loop between two points:

1) Software exists to solve specific problems
2) Art exists to vaguely question

This simplification is, I think an accurate assessment of a logical hole in Steve Job’s explanation that Apple’s design is ‘the intersection between the liberal arts and technology.’ Something that is true only in so much that Apple designed software that solved artists problems. It wasn’t art itself.


Tools are not Art

Tools are not art, they exist for functionality. They may have craftsmanship which, over the course of history, is eventually considered artistry, but if they were designed for use at inception they are not an explicit form of artistic expression.

I’d guess most developers would agree with me at this point. When I talk with devs they get excited by big problems, and the equally big (or elegantly small) solutions they have created to solve them. Vaguely questioning the purpose of humanity is not even on the map. They might admire the craftsmanship or ingenuity of their solution, but it is doubtful they would call it a definitive statement in the great dialog of the liberal arts.

What does software gain, if anything, from artistry

Human expression can be many things, efficient or inefficient, beautiful or ugly, functioning or broken, specific or vague. All these can be attributed to a work of art and, for better or worse, not detract from defining it art.

Tools do not enjoy such luxury: a broken tool or a tool that does not perform its intended function is no tool at all. A tool lacking in any specificity -- not created out of a need to accomplish or otherwise fix a problem -- isn’t.

So what does software gain from art? Poets, in their abstract efficiency, can’t teach a coder new tricks, because development is built on specificity, and a coder can’t use a juxtaposed metaphor to get around a specific need.

A designer, while often drawing on artistry to create textures and type, is a slave to the functionality of their system. While they may inject some whimsy into their designs, ultimately they are researching the science of human-machine interface, not holding a mirror up to society.

The social web is art

Would a social network qualify? Consider what it does -- it is a reflection of its participants in context of their community through metaphorical mapping of our relationships. It records human expression en-masse through still images, text and video. It houses expressions, desires, and hopes in the form of ‘likes’.

It could be, in some sense, the fulfillment of Warhol’s art factory -- a joint project of many voices, constantly producing, to arrive at a yet to be known statement.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google many other social systems may qualify under these same lines as well. While the constructs themselves, upheld by servers and software, are not art, the final product: the recording of the human condition on a mass scale, is.

In the a coming series of posts, I’ll explore each of these networks from art critics perspective. What does Facebook tell us about ourselves, how does Google question community and what if anything is beautiful about Twitter.

And, are they any good?