Paper 6 -
Distinguishing concepts: Lexicons of interactive art and architecture

Bailey Newton-Browne.

This paper, distinguishing concepts by Usman Haque was all about the changing definition of words between chosen disciplines. For example, “Interactive” in terms of digital design means that a person can interact with whatever you’re talking about. They argue that the term interactive is pointless and funked/warped due to it being ridiculously over used and therefore just meaningless in its field.

They also argue that each field of design has way too many semantic words, causing semantic drift, (The eventual confusion via technical Jargon.) Design and architecture are mentioned a lot and also compared a lot in this paper. This is because both of those things have semantics that should still hold value. They argue that the words that were specifically invented for these fields of work, have become over used and warped to what people overuse them for and not their original representations.

It also goes over how our physical and digital private spaces are both built to facilitate the rights of the people who use them, no restrictions. This means you can group more design work and actually be free with what you display.

Going back to the word “interactive.” They say that because all art is interact-able, the wird has become ridiculous when you use it in the subject of design and artwork. This is a key example of how they crossed design and architecture over each other.

To conclude, I found this paper, the hardest to get along with. I didn’t understand it too well, even after reading it through slowly many times with gaps of time inbetween each read, I just couldn’t properly wrap my head around what was being said and what the writers of this paper were actually trying to get across. This paper confused me but it brought some interesting points into play, for example, they’re right when it comes to the word interactive being over used and it was rather interesting to cross over and compare design work on web platforms to architecture. I enjoyed what this paper did to affect me but I don’t fully grasp what it was trying to tell everyone.