I found that the article contained a great deal
of political discussion. However, what stood out for me was the posing of a few
good questions. The first being why.
It's a good question because it gives artists (media artists especially) a reason
to more deeply engage with their visualizations. Why this technique? Why
that method? The answers lead to a chain of further questions, eventually leading
us to, as the article describes, the issue of definition for aesthetic qualities, such as beauty. In the process
of creating effective visualizations, we find ourselves locked in a glorious
philosophical debate.
This questioning of purpose paves the way
for the second major question suggested by this article; that is, the issue of
the sublime. The article distinguishes between employing visualization tactics
for reasons being sublime and user-friendly. Striving to make a
visualization graphically easy to understand is an approach or criterion, as the author of the article
claims, borrowed from the technical field of science and engineering. And so,
media artists are inevitably challenged to find a comfortable balance between the
so-deemed unsatisfactory qualities of predictability and ease of understanding,
and the traditional artistic qualities of inventiveness, creativity, and expression.
The good thing about media art and
visualizations, I find, is that artists have the freedom to place their artwork
wherever they want on this gradational scale. I admit that restrictions may
sometimes aid in developing an artist's understanding. However, having this
freedom is what separates the art field from those such as science and engineering.
It leads to diversity, and that's a
good thing too.
