Web design as a new media of art

Posted by:Anthony Mack on Sep 09 2006

In my opinion, modern art has hidden the cultural use of art. I believe that art should be used in our culture as it once was in the “Indian Art” days as a craft, important to the everyday activities of humanity. Indian art philosophies originated in the middle Ages of Europe and have become proper to the Christian and the Hindu philosophy of life. In opposition to the modern view, Indian art stresses that “Art is primarily an intellectual act; it is the conception of form, corresponding to an idea in the mind of the artist” (Coomaraswarmy). I strongly believe that we have finally made a break through to combine the modern view of interpretation and still keep its culture use. Web design is just one solution to this

Web design and digital media is becoming the new foundation of art in terms of cultural use and importance. It is a method of art that has become a powerful tool of cultural interaction as well as an intellectual stimulation. The sophisticated cyber world of the internet is allowing people to share their lives with millions of viewers in terms of artistic expression, educational/intellectual pursuit, and entertainment. A web site does this by creating a visually pleasing environment in which its content reflects on its design. The overall look and content of a web page work together to form the same concept, one is typographical, and the other is graphical. The composition of the site’s design allows a visitor to evaluate its appeal in the same way as if you were looking at a painting. In my opinion, the design of the site contains an equal amount of aesthetics as a painting. A painting and a digital art form can represent the same aesthetics because they are they same form, just using a different medium.

I want to convey the cultural importance and use of an art. Without art’s influence within a culture, what would really inspire someone to create something new? In most modern views of art, such as that expressed by Susanne Langer, art’s primary function is to objectify feeling. In my opinion, this concept does not benefit a society. It only contains the ability to effect individuals and not a culture as whole. Langer says that art is the “formulation of so called inward experience and inner life” (Langer). With this stated, she specifies that it effects individuals with experience and values of life. An entire culture can not agree upon this formulation because it specifies explicit methods of inward experience and life that can only be estimated by one entity. It’s too vague to get an entire culture to coincide with.

However, modernists have influenced the internet to form a new media of art. Web design is now a new method of art that combines the aspect that Langer specifies of objectifying feeling as well as the cultural use of Indian art. At first, I thought that these two philosophies could never combine with each other and in most cases they still cant. Moreover, they do have the potential to work with each other in the media of web design.

A web site contains two main elements, they being visual and functional. With my five years experience in this field, I can say that both feeling and intellectual acts can be brought out from a web site. The design of the site is the most crucial element in which it needs to grab the viewer and gain their interest. After that, the functionality is what keeps the viewer there for a certain amount of time. A good example of this would be today’s popular internet search engine Google. It provides a clean look that is well organized for easy guidance of results. Google’s major role as a search engine is what keeps people going to www.google.com. The design of a web site conveys something similar to Langer’s specifications of objectifying feeling and formulating inner experience. The web site itself is the experience. The functionality is similar to the Indian art philosophy of cultural use. The way the site works and how well it works is what enhances the uses of the site. This modern method of designing a web site is a solution to art’s deceptive exploit upon the world. Now we can see all aspects of art that are meant to be seen in an ideal world.

The sense of community with the design world of web design classifies a culture of itself within this media of art. The internet has established another world in which almost all elements of interaction within a society have been simulated via the internet to allow people to communicate with each other. Web design has taken advantage of this opportunity to allow people to get jobs, listen to music, download files, post information, and many other things over the internet. To be on a website is to communicate with an endless number of cultures and communities. A web site’s goal is to establish a channel of communication to give and receive information, entertainment, and educational pursuits. This is exactly what the internet was invented for.

My viewpoint comes from a Web Designer, one who try’s to express themselves in their visual design and shares their memories in their source and content. In my honest opinion, web design is now a new media of art in which can provide not only the interpretation of feeling but also to give a use to the culture it resides in. This modern method has grounded back to our roots where we can use art as a sense of craft to provide visual contemplation and still provide a cultural use. It is a good solution to the recent alteration of art to where it has been so controversial in the last few years. Hopefully web design will be grasped to achieve its unity it was invented for and to become an art form. The web industry in my opinion should be the next major technological advance which will benefit all who wish to pursue its greatness.