"It's like that now." - OutKast, Da Art of Storytellin', Pt. 1
So, over on tumblr, I quoted Seth Godin:
Don’t show me a project, a website, an ad buy or an essay without first telling me what it’s supposed to do when it works properly. First, because I might not want that result. And second, how else am I supposed to judge if it’s good or not without knowing what you’re trying to do…Too often, we’re in such a hurry to show off what we’d like to build we forget to sell the notion of what we built it for.
And Swirlspice asked:
A friend of mine who knows something about art criticism once pointed out to me that the way to judge art, especially modern and contemporary art, is by whether the work does what the artist intends it to do (not by whether you think you could have done it yourself or whether you actually like it or not). Same thing?
No, I don't think so. At least not in the way I think about use cases, work, and art. Work should be about something. We are doing things in order to secure a very specific desired use. To solve a problem. To create an opportunity.
I don't think art has to do any of those things. I don't think we need to know an artist's intentions with a piece. I don't think an artist has to have any intentions at all. I tend not to read much art criticism (I prefer art history) because I don't want someone else's reactions to muddy my own. I rarely even want to know what the artist was thinking because how I feel about what they create is more important than what they were feeling when they were creating it.
In On Writing, Stephen King notes that a lot of good fiction writing, in his opinion, has to do with what an author leaves out so that the reader gets to participate in the creation of the story. So if I write this:
There was the book on the table. She was afraid to open it.
It's up to you to fill in the rest of the detail. What kind of table is it? What does the book like? What does "she" look like? With subsequent or previous sentences, I'm likely to help you travel through this fictional world with a scary book but what you choose to look at on this journey and how you choose to see it, are your own.
At work, though, I want to know everyone's intention. The primary goal isn't about feelings or beauty or inventiveness or creativity (although, of course, that's part of what we do). No, the primary goal is about results. So, if you want me to exert effort towards something, let me know why we are doing what we're doing. Otherwise, how will we know it was successful?
An artist is successful the moment he or she gets me to see, hear, read, and feel their work in whatever way I feel it.
I don't think I can think of the two, art and work, in the same way.
