Digital Spaces : Curating For Scalability

I’m thinking about formats, specifically different screen sizes as different forms, as different physical spaces one condenses one thoughts into — or stretches them out.

This idea of taking one form and changing it into another, not only the screen size that shifts in this process, but the meaning as well.

The format which you choose to share and communicate your ideas within, dictates your design.

Every application has its own format, it’s limitations, and with that it’s deciding the kind of content, to an extent, you can create within it. If an application such as youtube, for example, gives space for long form video, both in time & in it’s aspect ratio, then spreading that content across different applications forces you to change certain perimeters that made that content what it was.

You would have to condense it so it fits into another application, where it might lose its intendant value. That same video could be scaled to a larger screen, and now, it’s visual composition might lose its impact on the viewer, leaving more empty spaces that were not meant to be there originally.

The focus here is on visual materials. information that needs a specific screen, or any screen to transmit its content, and the need to maintain that meaning across different screen sizes & time limitations allotted by specific applications and/or machines.

Another thing to consider, Is interactivity — taking this visual material that is meant to be passively viewed & thinking about creating an interaction with it’s design.The experience of interacting with a design such as a website, across different devices that experience will be different. A computer would use a mouse or a track pad and allow you to hover over objects and see their function vs on mobile, hover is not a viable option, only by scrolling (gesturing) across your screen can you see how an object responds.

As a designer you need to think not only of aesthetics, but actual usability — which shifts the conversation from passively viewing art to actively participating in the designed experience. There for you can’t just cut & paste functionality, you have to consider the persons experience across a variety of machines and applications limitations.

Thinking of actual physical space, and curating for that space, outside of the internet — let’s say, a room — in a museum. in a museum you would choose a specific room to present your work that is most applicable/ suitable for that kind of work. Large ceilings, lights, the way you would walk through a room to experience the art presented, and so on.

Here, online, or here — on a screen — its kind of like your trying to scale the same work in a lot of different ways — to fit — as if this one piece could just adjust itself automatically to any space, and still maintain its original meaning.

I would argue that you can’t.

I feel that now we are constantly designing one idea to fit different spaces simultaneously, which leads to different experiences & interactions with our work . This in turn can lead to a variety of interpretations to our work that we have not considered or intensionally put out there.

It’s a real shift in how to approach the process of creating itself. as your thinking of the subject matter to engage with and represent you need to add to that process — the applications your choosing to upload & share your work in — what spaces, digital spaces are you designing for ?

Do I use this opportunity to expand my works meaning, or do i work to fit it into a pre-designed digital space? - do i use these digital spaces to look at my work from different perspective & aspect ratios, or do i just try to fit my work into these spaces and let the chips fall where they may ?

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