Designed Literature (Part One)

Everything is designed. The keyboard I type on, the clothes I wear, the interface I toggle, the desk, the fridge magnets, the storebrand tea, etc etc. All designed. Humans, like all creatures, are always adjusting their environment to make survival more convenient.

Since the industrial revolution, the mass production of industrial designs has changed our landscape so much that neo-luddites (who prefer the term "environmentalists") call for an end to all industrialization, for the sake of "recovering the environment". But it's obvious that man has not destroyed "the environment"; he has made a new environment better suited to his needs.

The new landscape is here to stay, and it will only grow. We ought to accept design, and try to be discerning about it, rather than ignore or reject it, because it democratizes discovery, improving quality of life for everyone.

So, to focus on a field of design chronically behind the rest: literature. Any designed text is a work of typography, which is usually taught with graphic design. People who study typography may work printing posters, designing typefaces, or printing books. So, now that the connection's established, let's look at designed literature as a continuum.

The (Increasing) Importance of Intermedia: An Unjust Survey of Videogames

Art has recently tended toward medium melding: painters have been writing on their canvases; writers have been doodling on their manuscripts; and installations target all the senses, aiming for an unprecedented sort of participatory immersion. But, even the immersive installations are fast losing their edge, and new media promise a future of increasingly integrated art mediums.

I use the word melding because it fits the intermedial approach. As art evolves, we will see it, not as a sum of its parts, but as a whole. In the future, people won't think of film as a mix of music and pictures; they will think of it as film. Intermedia is art where a meeting of mediums achieves something that can't be done with one medium alone: a synergetic spirit must permeate the piece.

Dick Higgins intended this method of analysis when he defined intermedia, and later when he defended his word and distinguished it from multimedia. Multimedia is obsessed with the preconceived notion of media: we think in terms of what we already know. Indermedia asks us to look where mediums merge, to accept a piece as new.

Interestingly, or perhaps fittingly considering the decentralization of Fluxus and Mail Art, intermedial aesthetics are being adopted by low culture faster than they can be considered in ivory towers. Gamers, for instance, are beginning to demand narrative sophistication; and most players don't dissect their favorite games, evaluating music, dialogue, animation, and textures independently. They see a whole.