Office Art
The tools that we use at work tend to define [in both literal and abstract ways] an important part of who we are. Marshall McLuhan’s “extensions of man” metaphor [applied to media as tools in their own right] seems to be more and more relevant these days, with computer-intensive work environments proliferating in the great majority of urban areas causing an overdependence on CPUs of all shapes and sizes.
Today we have a symbiotic relationship with these chameleonic machines that is intensifying as the amount of time that the average knowledge worker spends with them increases. The ubiquitous Microsoft Office, king among spreadsheets, memos, emails, and sales presentations, has created an environment in which cut and paste, more than an operation represents a lifestyle.
Microsoft defines the suite as “productivity and information management tools” with an aura of efficiency very much inline with the corporate environment. The users of Office would probably define themselves in the same terms, at least in the professional context. This might be why the limitations of the medium end up becoming our own. Proof can be found not in our obsession to fit ideas within the confines of PowerPoint, but in the fact that, whenever anything goes wrong, most people tend to blame the software rather than the person behind it. Edward Tufte provides great insights on this matter, his essay “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching our Corrupts Within” is probably the best place to initiate any reflection on humans versus this software.
David Byrne also offers an excellent example of PowerPoint in the hands of the artist, which can also be seen as a realization of McLuhan’s vision of the artist as a technological leader in modern society, helping us understand technology while technology itself is literally running over most of us. The work of Byrne started as an exploration of the medium, more to condemn its limitations than to really use it for artistic purposes. That initial approach changed dramatically as the artist realized PowerPoint’s potential beyond its traditional use, a great account of this early stage can be found in a 2003 Wired article titled “Learning to Love PowerPoint.”
Two years ago Byrne published his experiments with PowerPoint in a book/DVD set ironically labeled “Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information.” By breaking the imaginary “limitations” of the tool, the artist pushes us to confront our own approach to communicate ideas, adding significant value to corporate life in the process.
Other artists have been a lot more daring, going beyond PowerPoint [that could be considered the low hanging fruit] and into a more hostile territory. Detroit-based Danielle Aubert discovered the joys of Excel from the point of view of the designer; the result is a web exhibition and a book titled “58 Days Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel.” The January/February 2007 issue of I.D. reviews Aubert’s Excel work defining it in the exact context of Microsoft’s own description of the software: Personal and Productive.
Art is leading the reinvention of corporate software, which far from depending on further [inevitable] technological breakthrough, seems to depend on a broader understanding of the same tools. The answer to better PowerPoint won’t be found within the software itself but rather within the people behind it.
Excerpt from “Four and Half Months of Daily Drawings Made in Microsoft Excel.” See the full video @ danielleaubert.com