I am an artist and tech is my medium.
The solution space in tech is growing unbounded and converging towards a medium in itself.
Last year, I talked about what it was like to fully invest in yourself, reduce, simplify your life and do the hard, lonely work of finding out who you really are.
And the above is who I am.
There are more of you out there. So, I’d like to share with you how tech is, or has, become an artistic medium and how I engage with it to express myself.
Let’s Talk About Media
“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.” — Marcel Proust
Nope, not songs, not mixed, not canvas, not The Media. Just a vehicle transporting artistic expression.
The medium separates us from the artist. Many complain that this is a problem and that in this separation meaning can be lost. I tend to disagree.
The choice of media as well as the separation itself is extremely important. Without it, there would be no common foundation for us to encapsulate what is. Metaphorically, a medium is like language, it unites us in common tools for discourse so that ideas can spread (literally, it can be language, as language is a medium in itself).
Some characteristics of media are that the input and output mechanisms are almost infinite, or for all intents and purposes, completely unbounded. Take paint on a canvas or words on a page. The permutations at our disposal to arrange paint or words in a manner that could provoke thought in humans (or any animal) is awe-inspiring in its vastness.
Which brings me to tech and, specifically, development. In the past, I’ve talked about how the solution space for most problems in tech is growing unbounded. Yes, there are accepted or preferred ways forward (just like there’s an accepted or preferred place to place a comma), but on the whole the frameworks, languages, platforms, data, devices, designs, et. al. are only increasing.
The micro-choices we make using all of these levers to develop products and help people are now a matter of taste and personal expression.
Developing technology, especially when you add design to the mix, is becoming a medium in itself. There is no black and white, cut and dry correct platform, language, data-type, device, design, framework, or algorithm to address a problem.
It’s just you and your perspective. If your perspective is sound and you can authentically engage with a market need, it will be successful.
Engaging with Tech as a Medium
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” — Pablo Picasso
In order to engage with a medium and push its boundaries so you can craft something truly differentiated, there’s no shortcut. You must master the principles and develop a strong foundation.
By understanding the principles well, you can make the concerted choice to break some or choose to ignore others. The sum then becomes a unique and powerful product that pushes culture and technology forward.
Begin with understanding data. How it’s stored, what it can do, and the structure in which it can be grouped to provide real meaning. As a corollary to this, make sure you take a look at how algorithms work. Algorithms help make data useful and consumable by people.
Next, it’s really important to understand how to structure code to actually develop computational artifacts. That’s all programming is. Become adept at core programming design patterns that are language-independent. Understand each’s limitations.
Focus on a particular programming language to express and practice these methods. I’m not a dedicated developer, but find that being well-versed in the boundaries of many technologies to be important. Proficiency in a single language will enable you to quickly pick-up others.
Equally as important, take time to understand interaction design. Notice that I did not say design or UX. In today’s world of many devices, platforms, and services for people to engage with technology, it’s important that a design education can span all of these surfaces. Interaction design focuses on “shaping digital things for people’s use” and is the core to UI and UX. A solid foundation will last you decades.
An Artistic Technical Case Study
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” — Scott Adams of Dilbert fame
Underlying any creative endeavor is a creative process. The process is often subjective with few objective components and on the surface is seemingly dissimilar from artist-to-artist. Yet outcomes and emotions, the subjective end-result of art, converge.
As a product designer, when working on everything from branding to UX to algorithms, the creative process forms the high-level framework from which all work flows. I want to be absolutely clear that the process involves the deeply technical as an equal partner to the deeply subjective aspects of art.
In order to best illustrate this point, let’s talk about a technically esoteric example that seemingly has nothing to do with art.
My current project involves combing through data. The subjective product design goal is to extract this data, interpret and group it, and attach natural language phrases to it so it is human readable.
There are strict computational algorithms that exist to achieve the above. However, they all require significant user input and feedback loops as well as a sufficiently large data-set. At the outset of a startup, when you have none of these at your disposal, it may seem impossible of a task. Many strict engineers and technologists have told me so.
And I agree with them, from a strictly technical perspective. The artistic side of me, however, knows it’s possible.
Through a creative technical process, the data-set can be reduced and curated into what academics call the “trivial solution”, or, in other words, the answer that solves the technical problem with all constraints applied. It’s the ideal solution in an ideal, perfect world. A perfect world doesn’t exist, though, so tough luck…
The technical part of my brain would stop here. It says, well, the “trivial solution” is trivial and not good enough to make any appreciable dent in people’s lives. It’s not worth it to create a product or experience around it.
But, my artistic side kicks-in and can bridge the gap. It can work-on a design that is satisfying and delightful from an interaction perspective with just the data at hand. Each data structure, when properly delivered and annotated in a fashion that affects emotion for people and also ameliorates the algorithm can be successful, now. Color can convey that a data set is incomplete. An animation or simple gesture can provide just enough signal to deliver feedback for a collaborative filtering algorithm and a delightful data representation.
In order to navigate down this path, it begins with a technical foundation. You need to know the bounds of the field to know where the goal posts are. Then, it requires technical creativity to curate and iterate through many possible solutions with intangible constraints. Lastly, pure artistic creativity results in emotional designs that bridge the user experience gap. The end result is subjective, using objective tactics and strategies to deliver a differentiated product design and delight.
The takeaway here is that technical prowess forms the foundation. A strict technical implementation can be used as a tool and also the core to creative problem solving. Artistic and creative pieces form the whole and humbly engender empathy and deliver delight to people, letting them know you’re on your way to something that changes their lives.
It’s why I engage with many media types. After all, what’s really valuable is understanding the subjective whole. Don’t believe me? Well then, here’s a poem:
Interface
An artist pushes culture forward,
An engineer pushes technology forward,
Me?I push both.
