My job is in computer graphics, design and also involves some programming. For the past couple years, there’s been a recurring theme to conversations about what I do which has gradually grown to become something that really bothers me.
Basically it comes down to this–what will I have to show for my work 20 or 30 years down the road? It’s pretty safe to say that none of the websites I’ve created will be online anymore, it’s doubtful if the CD-ROM based training will exist or even function on future computers, the community of almost 1000 people I?ve brought together will probably be gone (though hopefully many of the friendships will remain) and most of the other projects I have worked on will be entirely irrelevant since they all deal heavily with very ephemeral ideas and products.
It could be argued that the type of work I do is the building blocks of the Internet (in whatever form it ends up being) of the future, and that that is a tangible enough result of my work. Really though, the Internet itself is such a big intangible that I don’t count it as something I?ll be able to look back on and feel like it?s something I accomplished.
I?d like to be able to physically touch something?hold in my hand and say ?I made this.? I want to be able to have something to hand down to my kids from when I was younger. I don?t feel the need to change history or to alter the course of science, but I do feel the need to get my hands dirty?make something, have something to show for all the thousands of hours I spend trying to make a living.
3 replies on “Working on Something Tangible”
Good point. I wonder if other people besides us computer guys feel that way. I did do a stint as a construction worker to go through school a while back and we worked on an apartement complex. Now everytime I pass I can say, “Look what I helped build.” How long will it be there though? 10, 30, 50 years before its torn down and replaced with a new state-of-the-art building? Docs fix people, but they die. Stock brokers make $$, but that gets spent. What DOES stand the test of time? Good question.
That’s an interesting observation. Maybe what I’m really trying to get at (and didn’t say in the entry) is not so much that something tangible remain down the road. Maybe it’s more that I feel I need something real now.
Doctors, construction workers, even stock brokers (to a lesser extent) all work with something they can hold in their hands, touch; something that is part of the real world and exists in the way that people have always known things to exist–in one place at one time and tangible.
I feel like what I create exists in a realm that is so new and so conceptual that it only pseudo-exists. I can burn a CD of my work, that shows nothing?in fact, the ONLY way anyone can see or interact with anything I?ve done is by looking at a computer screen?and once they click that little red X, it?s gone forever.
Maybe I need to look at it in terms of ?my website is helping this business grow,? or ?my website helped bring these people together,? or ?the training on this CD made part of that ship possible.? That at least give me something tangible, but even then, there?s a layer of separation.
It is easy to become disenfranchised with the medium when the context of web communication is so distant. With a building, a physical object, or something tangible there is always some kind of reaction one can measure.
When I paint I can see how others respond to my painting, sculpture, etc. Their eyes light up or dourly grimmace and instantly I can tell what they are thinking and infer some kind of meaningful relationship between them and the work. Can the same be said of the web?
For those creators of websites, digital art, and all other things computer where is that moment of instantaneous social feedback? Where is the physical satisfaction of building something that can be weighed, measured, and worshiped over and over again as a new creation that yeilds endless emotional satisfaction? I have always struggled with digital art because the reactions of those observers on the other side of the globe are always hidden behind the glowing mask of their computer screens. They lie out there somewhere far away… where, I can’t tell and I don’t really know if anyone anywhere has even seen this great work I have bled sweat for.
Is there anyone out there? Is there anything beside the abstract. Even the typing is abstracted and reabstracted as it is fragmented into several packaged bits and sent who knows where only to be mysteriously reassembled and sent to this tactileless computer screen in little photon bursts that disappear as soon as I close a window. I understand your frustration.