Beyond Be Leaving
Monday, October 10, 2011 at 02:30AM 
Drawing is applied inspiration. You have to have something to say or mean when you spend time placing lines on paper. The time and trees killed in the practice of drawing is the heavy lifting of learning how to make meaning happen but it isn't meaning itself. The problem with a highly polished drawing is that it falls in love with it's own surface but has no interest in the actual subject depicted. It is like the beautifully realized display food used in restaurants in Japan--looks great but it is fake.
As I think more about how drawing is a tool to connect us to everything that we experience, I can't help but look at the user experience of a recent tool that I am using as much as my sketchbook--the iPad. There is no doubt that this new tool is a genius at media consumption, but the same problem happens with the iPad as with our highly polished drawings. The tool answers how we experience the content rather than allowing us to discover content through the use of the tool.
App content so far has been obvious and underwhelming in actually stretching the idea of what tablets could be. That is until today when I downloaded the first 3 of the proposed 10 apps from Biophilia.
Biophilia is Bjork's latest project and it combines science, music, art, games, and deep user engagement. I think the iPad has just grown up--Bjork has opened the content of her work to be experienced in meaningful ways through the medium of the iPad. It is as if Biophilia was waiting for the iPad to happen and the iPad was created so that we could experience Biophilia.