The Art of Making Websites
Hidde de Vries gave a great talked titled “Creativity cannot be computed” (you can checkout the slides or watch the video).
In his slides he has lots of bullet points that attempt to define what art is, and then in the talk he spends time covering each one. Here’s a sampling of the bullet points:
- Art isn't always easy to recognize
- Art has critics
- Art is fuzzy
- Art can make us think
- Art can make the artist think
- Art can make the audience think
- Art can show us a mirror to reflect
- Art can move us
- Art can take a stance
- Art can be used to show solidarity
- Art can help us capture what it's like to be another person
I love all his bullet points. In fact, they got me thinking about websites.
I think you could substitute “website” for “art” in many of his slides. For example:
- Art is repeated
- So are websites. Think of all those websites that follow the same template.
- Art may contain intentions
- Like the intent to purposely break best practices.
- Art can show us futures we should not want
- Art doesn’t have to fit in
- You can make any kind of website. It gives you agency to respond to the world the way you want, not just by “liking” something on social media.
- Me personally, I’ve made little websites meant to convey my opinion on social share imagery or reinforce the opinion I share with others on the danger of normalizing breakage on the web.
- Each of those could’ve been me merely “liking” someone else’s opinion. Or I could’ve written a blog post. Or, as in those cases, I instead made a website.
- Art can insult the audience
- It doesn’t have to make you happy. Its purpose can be to offend you, or make you outraged and provoke a response. It can be a mother fucking website.
Of course, as Hidde points out, a website doesn’t have to be all of these. It also doesn’t have to be any of these.
Art — and a website — is as much about the artist and the audience as it is about the artifact. It’s a reflection of the person/people making it. Their intentions. Their purpose.
How’d you make it? Why’d you make it? When’d you make it? Each of these threads run through your art (website).
So when AI lets you make a website with the click of a button, it’s automating away a lot of the fun art stuff that goes into a website. The part where you have to wrestle with research, with your own intentions and motivations, with defining purpose, with (re)evaluating your world view.
Ultimately, a website isn’t just what you ship. It’s about who you are — and who you become — on the way to shipping.
So go explore who you are. Plumb the bottomless depths of self. Make art, a.k.a make a website.