L.N. Tolstoy and art in IT

Each of us wants to be a creator. Everyone wants to create masterpieces. But not everyone can break away from the routine, their typical tasks and start creating. It is possible that in order to justify this somehow, people began to attach a sublime sense to ordinary, in the sense of handicraft activity. Because of this, today we often hear about the "art of programming", the "art of project management", as well as other "arts." If you directly ask the authors of such teachings and manuals, they are unlikely to be able to answer the question, what is this “art” itself, and why is it not “science” or not any “dao” (which is also often found in book titles ).

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, being, first of all, a writer, was also interested in other kinds of what is commonly called “art” in the broad sense of the word. As a result, he had a small article “ On Art ” and a large monograph “ What is art? "

I will try to explain what art is in the opinion of Lev Nikolaevich, what is necessary for art to be such, and also what are the signs of fake art (the latter has been moved to a separate note). All this, as far as possible, is described in relation to IT and illustrated with examples.
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(Just in case, I ask readers not to criticize the stated position first of all , but to try to find a rational grain in the concept that will be presented. By myself I’ll say that I don’t completely agree with all the conclusions of Leo Tolstoy, but I find his conclusions , nevertheless, extremely interesting. I note also that for brevity I omit many reflections - perhaps, sometimes skipping logical connections.)

First of all, Tolstoy talks about what art is not , and to which it has nothing to do. Art has nothing to do with beauty. All philosophical definitions of beauty can be reduced to two basic views: 1) beauty is a manifestation of something metaphysical and absolutely perfect (God, will, ideas, etc.) and 2) beauty is a certain kind of pleasure we receive. In principle, the metaphysical definition, claiming to objectify beauty, is nonetheless subjective. That is, both kinds of definitions subjectivize beauty, making it dependent on the perceiver. Taste, Tolstoy writes, does not matter. It is useless to determine the meaning of art. We can argue with this conclusion, but we will move on.

“What is art, if you discard the concept of beauty that confuses everything?” Lev Nikolayevich writes. He sets the task to determine the purpose of art. Rejecting pleasure, he seeks his purpose in the life of man and of humanity .

Art, Tolstoy concludes, is a means of transmitting feelings from one person to another . As the word conveys thought , a unit of knowledge, so art must convey feeling .

“To evoke in oneself a once-experienced feeling and, by evoking it in oneself, through movements, lines, colors, sounds, images expressed in words, convey this feeling so that others experience the same feeling — this is the work of art. Art is a human activity, consisting in the fact that one person deliberately known external signs transmit to others the feelings experienced by him, while other people become infected with these feelings and experience them. ”

Let's move away a bit from Tolstoy and think about it - where are we in our computer activity transferring the feeling ? Do we pass it? When you program another bookkeeping form - is there a place for feeling, that is, art?

I conclude that the term user experience is the most important in the context of art today. I note that usability (often coming together with the specified term) comes from a clean mind, and should not transmit feelings . And so let's look at what is the user experience .

Unfortunately, I do not have a sufficiently developed terminology to talk about this more or less scientifically. Therefore, I will try to describe with examples what I mean when I use the word experience .

Five software products with almost exactly identical functionality can gather five different audiences depending on how they are perceived by users. This happens today most often in the field of so-called. web 2.0, where the software goes beyond the functional and goes into the social domain.

I somehow had to develop a service design, the central functionality of which was the mechanism of communities. There were many examples from which to draw: starting with LiveJournal, Ning (general purpose networks), continuing with forum systems (PhpBB, IPB) and ending with the same Habrahabrom or DeviantArt. Considering the design of all these communities, I came to the conclusion that, having the same functionality, they all convey different sensations of presence.

Livejournal is a collection of personal rooms (blogs) with small squares (communities) where people come running to view a little, given time, at the spectacle. Each Ning site is one large supermarket, where everything is laid out on the main storefront, outside of which everything is rather poor. Habrahabr was (and before the well-known measure remains) a large retail space, where everyone flies to quickly get what they need (well, or at least something ), react if there is anything, and run away on business. (The recent changes have turned for me Habrahabr into a sort of stone, which everyone turns for himself and perceives his own facets).

At the same time, I needed a mechanism of a sort of policy - a small town, for whose life it is important that all citizens realize community awareness, but where, at the same time, unification into groups / communities is stimulated; leaving in the private space is not encouraged. It turned out to be a large central square, where general issues are discussed, and gathering places “according to interests”. And although the functionality is all the same - tapes, notes, photos, comments, the “join the community” button, I had to draw and design my own implementation of this functionality in order for the idea to “play”.

The transfer of this feeling - a cozy room, piazza or official office is the very user experience. And in this sense, this is art, since the designer here conveys his feelings to the audience.

So, we have determined what art is. What is good art?

Real art, according to Lev Nikolaevich, should have the following features.

1) The work must be new and important to society.
2) It must be outstanding in its beauty form.
3) It must express the true need of the artist's soul and be in that sense sincere (that is, sincere) and truthful.

Regarding the first rule, I will quote: "In order that what the artist says is completely new and important, it is necessary that the artist be a morally enlightened person, and therefore would not live solely on a selfish life, but be a participant in the common life of humanity . " Perhaps here, speaking of IT, we will go into the field of mission and business goals. And, perhaps, we must understand that the object of art in this case grows out of the pure user experience, capturing the entire project from the very beginning (when we answer the question why this project is needed) to the implementation itself.

About the second rule, Tolstoy writes the following: “In order for what the artist says to be expressed quite well, it is necessary for the artist to master his skill so that, while working, he also thinks about the rules of this skill as little as the person thinks about the rules mechanics when walks . "

If the first and second rules somehow we learned to perform, then with the third most often there are problems. “In order for the artist to express the inner need of the soul and therefore would speak wholeheartedly what he says, he must, firstly, not engage in many trifles that hinder to really love what is peculiar to love, but second, to love yourself, your heart, and not a stranger, not to pretend that you love what others recognize or consider worthy of love . ” Probably, speaking of the practice of IT, and, more precisely, of all web 2.0 communities, you can equate this rule to the following: an abstract machine called “company” will not launch a product and will not build a community worthy of being called an art. The personal contribution of the founder is always great. And all the really good communities that I know have always had (at least at first) a leader who, with his personal appeal, worked to create an atmosphere — or, in other words, conveyed his feelings to the community members.

(However, the idea is not new in the field of building communities - I recommend, for example, the video lecture “ What to do if you are a shampoo, ” where exactly the same idea is said right in the introduction.)

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This is how Lev Tolstoy defined the concept of “art” in the nineteenth century. It seems to me that many of his conclusions are applicable today. At least, you can think: is it true that we are engaged in art where we would like to do it?

In the continuation of this article, which I will publish a little later, we will look at the methods used by modern “creators” to give their creation the form of a work of art when it is not.

Those interested can familiarize themselves with the original manuscripts - of course, much broader than could be covered in this article: “ On Art ”, “ What is Art ”.

I wish the readers true inspiration and true art!