Some Awesome Websites

So I've been just looking around at some different topics that relate to this project...

Here are some links:

industrial art
http://industrialartanddesign.com/index.html

what is art?
http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/artartists.html

art on purpose
http://www.artonpurpose.org/index.cfm

site specific art
http://sofiefr.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/what-is-site-specific-art/

I was also thinking about this project and comparing it to what other things I've studied throughout art school. Sometimes it's difficult to consider what you are doing as art. Even when designing something, such as a website or a business card, it can be hard (for me atleast) to recognize that what I am doing is art. For some reason I tend to think of art as being the thing on the wall or pedestal in an art gallery with a nice spot light above it and a little rope around it. I do know the art movements of the post WWII era, but I suppose this class has helped me to get reacquainted with them a little bit. Yes, art can be, and is obviously, that nicely framed painting or that bronze sculpture but art can also be... useful. It can be touched, and intended for interaction beyond simply sight, it can improve people's lives even on a basic level... not just to be more "cultured" or "intellectual."

It's thoughts like these when I realize that the old argument of "what is art?" can't really be answered... it can be anything really. Maybe that's the answer... art is anything. Anything can be art if that is its intention. Ok, so maybe making sound sensors for a library seems less like art and more like just a solution to a pretty annoying problem but we (my group) is not only trying to solve a problem, we are thinking about design, interaction, interface, circuitry, sensors, LEDs, wiring, color, sound, layers and layers of information... there's the art... in the consideration of the thing, if you don't consider the thing actual art.