My work puts me on the border between art and design. When is design, art? I came across this strongly-felt discussion on the AIGA website. Designers wrestle with this problem no matter what their medium.
After ten years in software, I have a strong designer part of me. The more I write, the more I find myself wondering how writing stories and poems is different to writing software. Both seem to dip into the unconscious to solve problems. Both involve making things that perform a function, even if that function is to make us feel something or make us question fixed ideas.
Is an artist always a designer? I would say yes. Is a designer always and artist? No, I don't think so. I am not going to offer any evidence for any of this :-) I'm just playing.
A designer solves a problem. An artist solves a problem too, but they do more than that. I wonder if an artist somehow chooses the problem, and chooses it in relation to her own identity and unconscious.
I'm sure there are examples on both sides of the artist/designer divide that will challenge these definitions, but I want to put a stake in the ground for myself.
What am I trying to do here? I want to integrate the two parts of myself, the software engineer and the writer, so I can find a way of working that honours both. They are different jobs in different mediums, but it seems to me that technology is changing things fast and there is something important in the problem.
Novels are only possible because of the printing press. How will stories be delivered and experienced once today's technological advances are harnessed and fully explored?
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