Discourse Review
This discourse review will look at a whole range of the art and design field, which produces all types of output from print, to digital and installation work. This work can be interactive, static and animated. This review will not just look at one area of design but will brush through multiple areas. These areas are in no particular order: New media art, digital art, interactive art, software art and device art.
The these terms are all well defined in Wikipedia if you require a definition, with the exception of device art which was coined by Machiko Kusahara and is better known as physical computing, which is defined well on Wikipedia.
There are many artists in this area of design, too many to name, here are a few:
United Visual Artists
Troika
Universal Everything
Jer Thorp
Lady Ada
Moritz WaldemeyerRon Arad
Jim Campbell
Michael Cross
The list could go on for pages and pages, however the point is that while this may be a relatively small area of design there are a lot of well known artists who are taking an interest in this area of design, or are just starting out, people have been creating personal projects in this area for a long time but it has not been until recently that these ‘geek projects’ have been used in a more wide spread manor such as there is now. With the commercialisation of this work, that is to say, now people get paid to do this, the amount of time and the diversity of these projects is able to grow and so rather than rough prototypes these projects are allowed to flourish to completion.
Despite the commercial aspect of this area of art and design many people still experiment at their own leisure in these areas for personal development, or just for fun. However companies such as Nokia, Addidas and Sony are taking a real interest in how a project like this could launch their latest product or promote their brand.
As with all forms of art and design there are those who write about this area too, however just not in the numbers currently that some areas are written in, three of the best books in this area are: Troika’s Digital By Design, and Lucy Bullivant’s Responsive Environments and 4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments. In addition to these books there are also many magazine articles written such as the recent article in Creative Review discussing Universal Everything’s Forever project for the V&A.
While some of the writing in these books and articles is quite interesting, it is frequently quite dry or repetitive, just regurgitating the same information as the artist had already provided, and it is perhaps due to the digital nature of this form of art and design which causes this regurgitation, because, most artists explain their work well and in some cases provide video how-to or making-of videos it is hard for the author of these publications to find anything new to ask or write about.
These books and articles will be of great help and importance in the FMP because they will offer guidance and inspiration, for example in reply to the Creative Review article one person wrote how the V&A Forever project reminded them of a large screen saver, which is obviously not the intended meaning of the project, so it will help to remember that not everyone sees things as you do. Additionally a lot of inspiration can be drawn from looking at other people’s projects which is exactly what led to this FMP brief.
ISBNs:
1851774815, 0500514380, 0470319119, 0470090928, 3899552172
URLs:
http://pieces-at-random.com/2009/01/13/va-forever/
http://www.designassembly.org/2008/12/11/va-forever/
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/va-forever/
http://troika.uk.com
http://universaleverything.com
http://uva.co.uk/
http://ladyada.net/
http://blprnt.com/