(Digital) Art vs Design: A Functional Definition
In 2014 I gave a talk at the Eyeo Festival titled “Field Reports From The Trenches Of Art & Technology”. It explored some of the paradoxes and inconveniences inherent in art practices that inhabit the same cultural space as technology-driven design and startup culture.
Sharing (and inventing) tools, tropes and terminology with a rapidly shifting field dominated by corporate interests and“disruptive” (and often somewhat accidental) drivers of social change makes for a bumpy, if interesting, ride. To lay audiences and the conservative observer, digital art may appear indistinguishable from the latest interactive “brand experience”. The subtleties of how art practices operating in this space differ from other agendas is easily lost in the noise of hype bubbles and novelty-driven viral content.
However, some artists have been able to exploit this proximity to the digital pop culture and achieve mainstream attention (and even viral status), though generally at the cost of loss of context. Your app for crowdsourcing social interactions might end up on FOX News, your annual report of your own personal data might capture imaginations far and wide, but details about your intentions and conceptual framework are likely to be shredded by the transition.
The excerpts below contain some key arguments aimed at the persistent “art vs. design” debate that keeps coming up, presumably in response to the inevitable friction caused by overlapping tools and topics of interest, along with diverging assumptions about methodology and objectives. The central argument here is for a purely functional separation (rather than formal or conceptual) of art from design based on market parameters.
Yet even this mercenary view will often fail to identify fluid boundaries between increasingly hybrid practices, defying classification by drifting from client-driven commissions and crowdsourced entrepeneurship, to self-published works and practice-driven research unbounded by academic convention. I suggest you open your mind real wide.
I also offer some parallel and non-exclusive takes on defining art, again pragmatic rather than idealist in an effort to negate the tendency to romanticize art. (A similar effort for design was not part of my talk. Some other time.)
ART: THE BASICS
First things first.
- Being an artist is a job, not a hobby. Not all artists make art full-time, but that does not make them hobbyists.
- Art is a type of labor, artworks are commodities. As such, the production and dissemination of art is governed by the rules of the market it is created and sold in.
- Yet the vast majority of art consumers (i.e. lay audiences) are largely ignorant of the mechanics of the art world.
ART VS. DESIGN?
The divide between art and design is more vague than ever, yet remains all too real. It’s arguably a false dichotomy, but one that nonetheless holds power in the real world.
Utilitarian function is no longer a signifier of design. “Design fiction”? “Design Art”? Speculative design? Similarly: Social / discursive /relational art? Water wells in Africa as art project? Embrace the weirdness.
Nevertheless, mutual skepticism makes crossing over problematic.
ART IS NOT DESIGN, IS NOT ART.
- Art is not design, and vice versa. This is not a question of relative value or even content, it is simply a question of markets and context.
- Whether something is art or design can not be determined solely from its style, form or content. The only practical differentiation is found in which market a given project was created for, and the discourse it is placed within.
Ps. Art is not implicitly better than design in any way, in many ways quite the opposite. So stop apologizing, already.
DEFINING ART
A few conceivable, non-exclusive options:
- A practice of self-initiated creative expression, possibly based on certain physical tools of production and material constraints, or defined through non-material means, such as conceptual, social, discursive and performative devices.
- A form of experiential research and knowledge production, unrestricted by academic or scientific conventions, often dealing with irrational aspects of human experience.
- The production and trade of low-volume luxury goods in a true gray market economy, valued according to artificially manipulated parameters (fame, scarcity, exclusive access.)
- A social party game, played either for kicks (free booze)or keeps (social status.)
- “Art is anything sold in the art market” (a personal favorite, origin sadly unknown.)
Appendix: Slide deck for the original Eyeo 2014 lecture
The complete slideshow of the talk these points are taken from can be found on scribd.com: 20140610 Eyeo — Marius Watz — Field Reports about Art + Tech. Embedded below.
