(App)-titude

The Democratization of Design through Social Media

With the advent of social media, applications such as Instagram and Prezi accelerate modes of creative production and accentuate aesthetic effects. It then becomes relevant to revisit Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility”, and update it according to today’s Digital Age of Exponential Reproducibility. However, Benjamin’s thesis only begins to recognize the nascent revolution brought about by the first few types of technological reproduction, whereas today’s context embraces the emergence of new methods of reproducibility as a given norm. It is thus crucial to refer to Jacques Ranciere’s writings on the Aesthetic Regime, which precedes the technological revolution. Specifically, Ranciere’s “The Surface of Design” will be the primary theoretical lens through which I shall determine how successfully social media applications have brought design to the masses.

Different digital applications provide creative help to the masses in two very divergent ways – one that is equitable, and one that is equal. Popular applications like Instagram and Prezi essentially create a level playing field since their user-friendly interfaces and simplified functions allow amateurs to achieve professional looking end-products. On the other hand, programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver under the Adobe Creative Suite have much steeper learning curves and easily reveal the inherent discrepancies of the playing field as professionals are more likely to utilize these programs effectively than novices. Equity is associated with the former, a level-playing field, while equality is the latter, a ground-zero playing field. This then begs the fundamental question of this investigation: is it equity, or equality, that better achieves a democratization of design?

“Which is a better mode of democratization – offering limited choice to everyone or offering unlimited choice to a select few?”

Walter Benjamin and Jacques Ranciere

Walter Benjamin vividly uses the example of the “magician” vs. the “surgeon” to showcase the difference between the “painter” and the “cinematographer”1, and how in both cases of the surgeon and the cinematographer the use of technology enabled a more direct and tactile relationship between the author and the subject, and in the zooming in of things we focus more on specific fragments, as opposed to traditional modes of representation that look at the whole picture from a distance. He then posits how technology brings about modes of reproduction that change the relationship between art and the masses, as is in the case of the “progressive reaction to a Charlie Chaplin film” as compared to the “backward attitude toward a Picasso painting”. Nevertheless, what remains limiting about Benjamin’s thesis is that the core of his theory rests on the contextual premise of technological reproduction being experienced for the very first time, and that this change serves as the origin of the new, exciting trajectory of the proletarian artist. There is a linearity to Benjamin’s argument, culminating in a specific moment of divergence, that is no longer relevant when fast- forwarded to today’s non-linearity, where divergence is not a hypothetical future but a given condition that has been existing since the past into the present. It is for this reason that in the interest of updating Benjamin’s work, I find it imperative to study Ranciere’s writings on the democratization of art.

The aesthetic regime, as developed and defined by Ranciere, is “the abolition of the parallelism that aligned artistic hierarchies with social hierarchies.” This results in the paradox of the aesthetic regime “assert[ing] the absolute singularity of art, and at the same time destroy[ing] any pragmatic criterion for isolating this singularity.” Indeed, in the Distribution of the Sensible2, a decision in literature to “depict and portray” instead of “to instruct” is perceived as democratic; the focus on the medium rather than the message is a movement already well under way. Thus even before the technological revolution, Ranciere has already anticipated and witnessed the shift away from hierarchies in art that have been historically embedded within mediums of art themselves. Consequently, according to Ranciere there are three Surfaces of Design: “firstly, the equal footing on which everything lends itself to art; secondly, the surface of conversion where words, forms, and things exchange roles; and thirdly, the surface of equivalence where the symbolic writing of forms equally lends itself to expressions of pure art and the schematization of instrumental art.”3 This can essentially be distilled to content, translation from method to content, and method itself, which will continue to be discussed with application to social media.

Double anxieties of social media applications

It can be said that the proliferation of social media applications, in making aesthetically- pleasing end-products available to everyone, induces understandable anxiety about the process. Take for example three similarly beautiful sepia-tinted photographs, the first one of which is post- processed manually by tweaking the development process in the darkroom, the second of which is a digital photograph with multiple layers of adjustments carefully added in Adobe Photoshop, and the third one being taken with one of Instagram’s many photo filters. If the end results of all inspire equal amounts of awe, does the difference in production methods affect the inherent value of the works?

Another source of anxiety is the extent to which the simplification of processes generates free choice. “Equitable” social media applications that level the playing field typically achieve their user- friendliness through limiting the number of choices users can make within that application. For example, Instagram has a finite number of pre-loaded filters, which offers significantly less choice than Adobe Photoshop’s multifarious ways of applying layers and blending modes. Prezi simplifies the plethora of Adobe Flash animation possibilities there are out there into less than ten command buttons. And Wix creates templates that you can customize to a limited degree under defined parameters of pictures, text, and a small selection of fonts, that offers far less permutations than if one were to build a website from Adobe Dreamweaver. It is an intriguing paradox that in simplifying the design process and making it accessible to a larger layman audience, these programs are simultaneously decreasing accessibility to complete design control. The anxiety lies in asking which is a better mode of democratization – offering limited choice to everyone or offering unlimited choice to a select few?

“The choice of each medium is necessarily deliberate and intentional. Consequently, the tedium associated with higher-level processes is a chosen condition rather than a circumstance.”

Third Surface of Design: Medium

Applying Ranciere’s “The Surface of Design” to the aforementioned anxieties, it becomes clear that due to the aesthetic regime, there is a lot more fluidity in one’s choice of art medium. Let us first look at Ranciere’s third surface of design, that of the medium. Ranciere says that “there are no noble or base subjects and that everything is a subject of art”, a statement on the first surface of design (the art subject), that can be similarly transposed to the third surface to read “that there are no noble or base mediums and that everything is a medium of art.” The absence of social hierarchy in art mediums today means that we no longer associate tragedy with patricians and comedy with plebeians, that the “dignity of the subject matter” no longer dictates “the dignity of genres of representation.”4 Returning to the two related anxieties engendered by social media short-cuts to design, this means that all are free to choose and vacillate between mediums and methods of design. That means that in the earlier example, the person skilled enough to develop the photo has the liberty to Instagram as well, therefore bypassing the hard work of processing photos in a darkroom if his or her ultimate goal is to produce that same effect. The skill level associated with each medium, assuming that the end products always have the same quality, should then no longer be a barometer of value. The freedom to choose between mediums means that the choice of each medium is necessarily deliberate and intentional. Consequently, the tedium associated with higher-level processes is a chosen condition rather than a circumstance, for no one is ever trapped in one medium and stopped from shifting to an easier way out. Following that, we can imagine a situation in which one would pick a higher-level process in order to tap into the increased opportunities for customization, exemplifying a case in which tedium is a choice and the trade-off for precision in representation. But suppose Person A, who chose the more tedious method of Photoshopping in order to reach the perfect type of sepia-toned, still ends up having a picture that looks the same as Person B’s, who simply picked an Instagram filter. In that moment of a finished product, it might not be distinguishable which is the better artist of the two, but we can argue that Person A remains more aware of the method that goes into creating that picture, while Person B’s success is a pure coincidence that says nothing about his grasp of the method. At the same time, if we were to argue about efficiency, we can also chastise Person A for not understanding the two mediums enough to recognize that there is a short-cut, and that Person B’s lucky success is still an undeniable success.

An interesting scenario arises when Person C, a professional designer fully capable of designing in Photoshop, chooses to use Instagram. We can then remove the previous uncertainties we had about our hypothetical characters, and assume that Person C is fully aware of the differences between the two methods, and made a conscious choice to pick the simpler one. Despite the medium itself having limited choice, Person C possesses maximum choice because he or she can choose between a medium that gives more choice versus one that gives less. The choice to reduce his or her choices through picking Instagram is then a conscious one. Assuming perfect information on Person C’s part, the scenario in which one over-invests in Photoshop when one could have done the same thing in Instagram will never happen then, simply because of how aware Person C is of the capabilities of the two mediums.

Second Surface of Design: Transmission

Having established the complete lack of hierarchy in shifting between mediums, we can now investigate Ranciere’s second surface of design, that of the transmission from raw material through medium to end-product. The same method of design can beget two different types of representation, that of archival and articulation. Archival happens when one uses the medium simply to record an existing concept, whose transmission is not singularly reliant on the medium of choice. Articulation happens when the medium selected is part of the process of expression. In Ranciere’s own terms, archival and articulation is the difference between the “schematizaion of instrumental art” and “expression of pure art”. At first glance it might seem that archival is inferior to articulation in terms of artistic value because the act of documenting is more scientific than creative. However if we look back at the example of the professional and the amateur using Instagram or Prezi, we realize that more frequently it will be the amateur that has the tendency to fully rely on the medium to create the end product, whereas the professional will merely be using the mediums as a tool to accelerate their representation. Is archival or articulation a better way of making art? Need there be a winner between the two? In Kittler’s Gramophone5, we are alerted to how archival and articulation become blurred entities with the introduction of the optical fiber as transmission network. When the “articulation” of media such as videos, text, and pictures becomes dependent on the rate of transmission of storage data, i.e. “archives”, the two types of processes become intermingled symbiotically. With the advent of flash storage and wireless transmissions, all types of mediums are in a way, democratized through a common method of archival and transmission. There is then a breakdown of hierarchy even in Ranciere’s second surface of design, with all mediums and methods of representation coalescing to the same frequency.

“Can there be democratization without elitism? Can the playing field be leveled without making initial inequalities even more apparent?”

First Surface of Design: Design Product

We are left with the last and most basic of Ranciere’s Surfaces of Design, that of the design product itself. Assuming the complete democratization of methodology and transmissions from method to product, does that then ultimately render the final design product the most easily differentiated and least democratic surface of all? Having leveled the playing field of Ranciere’s second and third surfaces, have we then simultaneously included a larger group of people in the discourse of design and created an even larger gap between quality and mediocre design? Can there be democratization without elitism? Can the playing field be leveled without making initial inequalities even more apparent? It seems to be that the average and the outstanding are two symbiotic entities that necessarily co-exist, since the presence of one defines that of the other, just like other binary oppositions in the world (e.g. matter and anti-matter). Returning to the earliest question about equity versus equality, it seems that the aesthetic regime effectively removes any true equity, as there are no real barriers that ensure that the playing field is perfectly leveled. It is indeed an oxymoron that the abolition of hierarchy also simultaneously destroys affirmative or protective barriers that allow for equity. Or to reiterate Ranciere’s words, the aesthetic regime “asserts the absolute singularity of art, and at the same time destroys any pragmatic criterion for isolating this singularity.”

Finally, the democratization of art seems logically to be projected to be most complete when all three surfaces of Ranciere’s are free from hierarchies and achieve maximum fluidity. The question is can the three surfaces ever simultaneously offer maximum choice? In the absence of hierarchies, how do Ranciere’s surfaces “slide” into, around, and between each other? Are we only limited to three surfaces or will the unifying transmitter that flattens the surface of translation become significant enough in future to form a new entity of design, such that mechanisms like optical fibers make up the fourth surface of design? Those will be the next questions to ask for this open-ended answer to the ceaseless investigation into the democratization of art.

  1. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, Part XIV Pg 35 – Part XV Pg 36. ↩︎
  2. Jacques Ranciere, Distribution of the Sensible”, The Politics of Perception (New York: Gabriel Rockhill, 2004), Pg 7-42. ↩︎
  3. Jacques Ranciere, “The Surface of the Design”, The Future of the Image, Pg 103-107. ↩︎
  4. Jacques Ranciere, Distribution of the Sensible”, The Politics of Perception (New York: Gabriel Rockhill, 2004), Pg 32. ↩︎
  5. Friedrich A. Kittler, “Gramophone”, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, (California: Stanford University Press, 1999), Pg 21 – 114. ↩︎

Written by He Yutian in 2013 for the seminar course “Critical Studies in Studio Practice.