Toward a Critical Aesthetic

Virtual worlds are works of art. I refer to their creators as “designers,” but that’s a misnomer; really they’re artists ¹. Although there is some debate over the distinction between art and design, it’s generally true that “design” has to convey a given package of information or utility whereas “art” is an end in itself. You tell a designer what you want; you ask an artist what they’ve got. What virtual world designers do is more Art than Design.

It’s like the difference between Science and Engineering: Scientists seek truth, whereas engineers seek solutions. If you ask an engineer to change a construct because you don’t like it, they’ll do so; if you ask a scientist to change a theory because

you don’t like it, they’ll stare at you blankly. Similarly, if you ask a designer to change a decoration because you don’t like it, they’ll do so; if you ask an artist to change a picture because you don’t like it, they’ll attack you with a hammer.

Virtual world designers must work within many constraints, and they do have to deliver a certain amount of utility. This is something they consider an intrinsic part of their art, though. If you want a formal portrait, you go to an artist who specializes in portraiture and considers that as part of their art; you don’t pick an artist at random from the Internet who might spend two weeks making preliminary sketches then present you with a wooden sculpture of a ship that is supposed somehow to capture your personality. Top virtual world designers create worlds because that’s how they express themselves artistically; utility is intrinsic what they design, in the same way that likeness is intrinsic to what a portrait artist paints. Designers who create worlds because they’ve been told to may still be able to put some self-expression or meaning into the product, but at the end they’re creating for you. Artists create for themselves.

I have a namesake who is a fully fledged professional artist ². His medium is acrylic and collage. His work involves cutting images from magazines, which he then laser-copies multiple times and incorporates into an artistic whole. The uniform reproduction of what are themselves mass-market images allows him to comment on things like commercialism, politics, stereotypes and many other things that interest him. He likens his process of creation to alchemy: He takes a base copy and turns it into art. As with any alchemy, this can only be achieved through a proper understanding of the materials involved and a meticulous approach to experimentation, hence all the painstaking cutting-out. The fastidious and craft-intense

process of creation gives him an understanding of the work he is creating, which enables him to embody it in the final artifact.

Virtual world designers might not have quite this degree of internalization about their work, but nevertheless if you plan to tell one of them mid-way through a project that you want them to drop something for marketing reasons, hide all the hammers first.

Some of what virtual world designers do really is design rather than art. Design is often used to create tools that can be used for making art, or to construct building-block objects that can be assembled in an artistic way. There are even theories for this ³. It can be regarded as part of the designer’s craft. It’s not why they do what they do, though; it isn’t itself Art.

Of course, virtual worlds are often such large-scale projects that many people have artistic input. The same also applies to movies; and in the same way that a movie’s director ⁴ ultimately holds artistic responsibility for that movie, the lead designer holds artistic responsibility for their virtual world. Actors and cinematographers, programmers and 3D modelers, they can all be artists; directors and designers, however, are the artist.