Reading response 4

Principle 4.5 in Artful Design states: "Design things with a computer that would not be possible without". This resonated with me and also called to my mind a very specific, personally relevant example. I like to make art; in particular, I like to draw. I've always been happiest drawing with pencils on paper or using a tiny little knife on scratchboard, and doing the occasional painting. As someone who also works a lot with technology (I'm a computer science major and also I'm a young person existing in the Internet Age), I've frequently been asked why I don't do more digital art, like digital painting. The thing is, I've tried -- multiple times, in fact, I have tried to get excited about digital art, but it's never stuck. I'm too attached to the tactile sensations of artmaking. Also, if I have the time to make art, I can never justify making a digital painting, which would take the same amount of time and effort as creating a physical piece of art, and just be wholly less satisfying. This principle, then, was extremely validating. "Design things with a computer that would not be possible without" validates my disinterest in digital painting -- while I am very interested in the things computers can do, I'm a firm believer that we don't need to apply technology to everything. There's a time and a place for everything, and in my personal opinion, given that resources are not a constraint (I'm in a privileged position to have the physical artmaking supplies I want at my disposal), drawing and painting are best done in the full three dimensional world and not on a 2 dimensional screen.

The book goes on to elaborate that it is imperative "to discover what the medium is innately good at". Once again, to use new information to validate my preexisting worldview and belief system, I think it's clear that one thing computers cannot emulate is the tactile richness of the real world. When we talked about the design of Ocarina, Ge mentioned his design decisions which aim to sort of make a nod to physical reality -- the circles "rippling" outwards, buttons appearing to be "pressed", etc. -- but even so, the user is still inevitably interacting with a screen. This is usually fine, since something like Ocarina has a lot of functionality which could not be implemented without the technology a phone / computer entails, but for drawing and painting the three dimensional world, the sensation of implement on surface, the pressure applied, the accidental smudging, the softness of the paper, etc. -- these are all integral parts of my love for making art that computers will never be able to capture adequately.