To the extent that any artist uses design, even typesetting or a pen, he has to realize that he is dealing in his art with systems which have been going on for thousands of years. The artist must surpass his technology to get at the real systems.
Often he has to break into the systems in question to access them. (That's why installing water heaters is an art, but not an art.) Without access there is only ignorance and fear.
In many cases people can access systems in a number of ways, plenty of them legal and guaranteed as rights by statute. Sometimes there are disputes and authority gets involved to break it up, but often the disputes are just rhetoric. Often the suppression of others' ideas is implemented with methodical, mundane violence. And after the twentieth century? Access may be the archetypal human dilemma, who knows.
The artist must be whatever he needs to be. Under current system conditions, the artist has to be a rhetorician, a historian, an economist, a good writer, a fast typist, able to coin domain names, academically qualified to interfere, liscensed maybe; he has to be both cunning and high-spirited. Got an MFA in design? Go work retail, no art-jobs out there. The artist is content, not design.
Not to get carried away by abstractions, but to address the question of design in the Genius 2000 Network: go check out
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/SFMOMA82700.html.
There is some design work in this url, some photos, text, etc.
Does the design help or hinder the literary value of the url? Is the design too flawed and inefficient to express the literary content; or is it possibly too professional and predictable to allow any literary novelty to emerge? Is the url itself great art, worthy of public subsidy? All these questions are legitimate and not intended to trivialize any topic at hand.
Ironically, the Genius 2000 Network has begun to employ more and more designers merely to transport the content; and these employees, shattered by the dotcom blowout, are both highly skilled and competitive. What is even more unusual is that Genius 2000 has created a minor but notable schism in the design community over what is good content. Content employs design, but not all design; there are abundant biological and economic sciences--Nobel Prizewinner Akerloff's work on informationally asymmetric markets comes to mind--to confirm this as a major system condition, perhaps something close to a universal system dynamic. Certainly in cyberspace no content means no design: what really pays the bills is traffic.
I've been writing about the failings of mainstream design and content under current conditions for years. To the extent that design is necessary for my writing, I use it, and when it is not necessary I avoid it as a waste of genius.
Now for a GIF,
Max Herman
Happy Holidays
The Genius 2000 Network
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/January_1_Website.GIF
++
Subj: Re: <nettime> design
Date: 12/23/2001 8:37:18 PM Central Standard Time
From: lake@lake.nl
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Sent from the Internet (Details)
Hi,
> Over the past decade the world has changed. Designers found new ways for
> communication. Globalization succeeded. Everything is connected to
> everything. We enjoy all this. It's beautiful! One planet, one network, one
> style.
>
> We did it!
You, dear designer, did nothing of the sort. The idea of networks, of
connecting people and machines, originated among technologists tampering
with the technology they were allowed to put their hands on, among
idealistst (read the history of the Fidonet for example) who used this
technology to spread content and meet others, and among traders of all kinds
who wanted to expand their markets. All the originators of the global world
had either a clear 'problematic' or a clear idea of content.
Digital designers came in only to manage the attention of people long after,
indeed very long, the networks had been laid down. Their problematic was a
derived one.
Please, don't take pride in the work of others.
> But the promise came with a warning: please, donıt be creative, donıt come
> up with new ideas, because itıs not in our concept and business plan. Our
> time and money is limited and our managers have everything under control! Do
> your shockwave and flash but not disturb our speculations. Play around on
> your computer but don't ask questions.
This subversion has one, and only one, fundament, namely the fact that
designers are better skilled to represent than to produce content. Content
is provided from the outside. Designers are soldiers without a nation.
I may be too old (65+) to understand this new world, by why people choose to
be better skilled at representation than at producing content is beyond me.
By choosing to be a professional designer, to become a manager of attention,
one has lost the right to complain about the source of the content. By this
choice you have placed yourself in ranks of the useable specialists. Period.
It does not really matter whether the directives originate from the circle
wealthy CEO's or the squadrons of noisy NGO-leaders: professional design
sucks by design.
> Iım a designer because I want to change the world. But changing the world
> actually has nothing to do with designing. It has to do with the
> responsibility for how this world functions and looks like. But to be
> honestS. I only became somebody who want to change the world after my
design
> style had developed for about 10 years.
Then it seems to me that your choice now should to produce content and make
design a secondary thing in your life. Perhaps in 10 years you can say
something like "I have given the world this new concept/new technology/new
story/a new method of comprehending the world". And you may use your
undeniably great skills of design for that purpose.
But BEING a designer?? Get Real!!
L.
E. lake@lake.nl
W. http://www.lake.nl (Dutch only)