Gooey Plastic
At what point does interactive design become temporal art over plastic art? This question seems to be rare yet extremely important in our decision making process. This book prompted my pondering of this.
To clarify, temporal art includes poetry, writing, film and music. Plastic art takes the form of painting, drawing and sculpture. What sets the two apart is that fourth dimension, time. The success of temporal art is in its progressive events leading up to a fulfilling end, better known as climax. This all makes sense, right? So how do we classify interactive art?
My guess is it’s both, however, I’m leaning toward temporal. Unfortunately a lot of times we design with a plastic mindset when we should be thinking about a climactic ending. Should we be treating sites like small stories? Grab peoples attention, pull them in, building them up, then smack them with an unforgettable message. Very few do this. The non-linear aspect of this medium complicates the time quality of temporal art.
So what is interactive art? Still pondering this one.
Remarks
Sam
Interactive art, to me, epitomizes temporal art, by your definitions. When done well, the viewer only thinks they are leading the story. Josh Davis’s interactive work is a great example of this.
Nathan Borror http://www.playgroundblues.com/
I definitely think there is a time and place for interactive to be temporal. Most, dare I say, boring sites are plastic for a very good reason.
Bobby Kellogg
My take is that it can be both - and doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
The interface of a well designed ecommerce site will most likely take the form of ‘plastic’ art - while the experience of being able to easily purchase an item (with confidence) is more of a ‘temporal’ experience.
Can you have one without the other? Sure. But I think that ‘plastic’ interfaces can often help create better ‘temporal’ experience.
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