The Jonathan Harris Incident

Many of you will know by now that the final session of the last week’s Flash on the Beach conference, by New York-based software artist Jonathan Harris, has caused quite a controversy. There are have already been lengthy posts attacking, disagreeing with, and defending Mr. Harris. Usefully, for those of you who were not in the audience, Jonathan has posted the full text and slides from his presentation on his website, and Andy Polaine has posted an audio recording. I would like to consider some of the things that were said during this presentation, and to address some of the responses that have followed.

In a nutshell, Harris believes that the online medium is in its infancy. This is a stage characterized by exploration and tinkering, but hampered by a lack of conceptual substance. He urges online artists, creators, and designers to ‘grow up’, by focusing more on ideas, and less on the easy promise of tech:

“I see a community that is distracted by relentless experimentation (experimentation is great, in moderation), constant tinkering (tinkering is great too, in moderation), advertising, games, purely aesthetic design, but most of all by the dizzying evolution of technology.”

He goes on to argue that it will only be by escaping these distractions that the community will be begin to produce work that is lasting and meaningful. 

I am surprised by the rancor that these comments have generated – mainly because I agree with them. In my own FOTB session, I discussed my challenges dealing with what I call ‘Excessive Complexity Disorder’ (which I have also nick-named Yngwie Malmsteen‘s Disease). I suggested that a lot of us can be so focused on making our projects as complex as possible – maybe to impress colleagues or to increase ‘blogability’ – that core concepts behind these projects get diluted. This is certainly in line with Jonathan’s remarks above.  

As for the issue of aesthetics, it has long been my main criticism of both my own work and the work of others in the Flash community that it too often commits to aesthetic at the cost of concept. I have been working very hard over the last few years to incorporate stronger ideas into my work, and thus it is easy for me to find agreement with Harris’ comments. At the same time, it may be that some or most of the creators have no interest in making ‘conceptual art’. This is certainly a valid choice, but in discussions that I’ve had with colleagues at conferences in the past, this doesn’t appear to be the case. Indeed, most of the people that I have spoken to seem to have a genuine interest in taking their work to the ‘next level’. So where does the conflict lie?

Criticism of Harris and his presentation seems to be coming from a few common fronts:

The first, and unfortunately most popular attack seems to be on his personal character – where he is being publicly branded as arrogant, self-serving, and (gasp!) academic. Such accusations, apart from being insulting, don’t have a place in a reasonable discussion and I am not going to offer them much consideration here. I will simply say that a lot of these remarks smack of anti-intellectualism, which I find particularly sad in a community full of so many bright minds.

The second criticism seems to be brand Harris as an outsider, and therefore suggests that his remarks are somehow invalid or inappropriate. Several people have suggested that his comments would have been taken more seriously and more kindly if they had been delivered by a ‘member of the Flash community’.  This is troubling to me. While I enjoy the privilege of speaking regularly at Flash conferences, I am always very happy to see new faces. They bring viewpoints and opinions to the table that are sometimes missing, and they often ask questions and provide answers that we may have otherwise overlooked. This argument seems to suggest that valid criticism can only come from within the community itself. Who decides who is in this community? Is there an entrance exam? 

More interesting and perhaps most valid are questions surrounding the worth of experimentation and tinkering. In his presentation, Harris does make repeated mention of both, and I understand that some people may have taken this as an affront. However, in my mind, the point is not that experimentation is worthless – instead there is a simple argument that for tinkering to be worthwhile, it needs to eventually transition into something more meaningful. Certainly Da Vinci was a tinkerer. But neither the Mona Lisa nor The Last Supper were experiments. Experimentation is a necessary part of the creative process – but it is only a part of it.

In case this post has starting to read like a Jonathan Harris booster, let me say that I certainly don’t agree with him on every point. He has a tendency towards utopianism in both his presentations and his work, which I can find a little bit hard to swallow. This outlook is most clear to me in the first two of his ‘questions worth asking’:

1. Can it make someone gasp or cry?
2. Does it feel as special as a love letter?
3. Does it truly represent our time?
4. Will it still feel relevant in 25 years?
5. Does it say something that’s never been said before?
6. Does it compare to the masterpieces of other mediums?
7. Could it have gone further?