[Sigia-l] The Poetics of Information Architecture

[Sean Lawrence]

One of the things that lead me to be interested in IA was it's elegance.  To
me it represents far more than simply navigational and structural design of
web sites or taxonomy creations.  It is a perspective, it is a manner of
thinking that portrays an intrinsic inquisitiveness coupled with the ability
to perceive the inherent patterns of systems, structures, etc.  It is an art
in it's approach and attains to a science in it's application.  IA blends
design, cognitive psychology, information science, elements of linguistics,
critical philospohy and literary analysis in a terrific almost kaleidoscopic
fashion as it seeks to be as medium-ecumenical as possible.  Growing up I
wanted to be an artist, writer, poet but I wanted to express all of those in
the purest, most refined way possible.  I dreamt of creating stories without
words or pictures.  In certain ephemeral ways, IA satisfies that need in me.
Blake wrote "If the doors of perception were to be cleansed man would see
everything as it truly is... Infinite", Mies wrote "Less is more".  I've
always sought to reduce the elements of my thoughts and ideas to their base
elements in order to perceive and create items of a natural elegance.  I
don't mean to sound airy-fairy but I am trying to express my visceral
attraction to what I perceive IA to be in it's unapplied form (in a rather
breakkneck fashion).  IA is a form of eastern and western thought combined,
left brain meets right brain melding(though I don't entirely by that
schism),a means of rarefying things to present them in their simplicity no
matter how complex they might be, a poetics of perception and cognition if
you will.

The lapis philosphurum of the high-modern age.

Digital Alchemists extraordinaire

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
Brian Christiansen
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 1:22 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] The Poetics of Information Architecture


The Poetics of Information Architecture, an article by Matthew Garber
http://www.designinteract.com/insights/032702/

I stumbled upon this short article on the Communication Arts' network site
"DesignInteract" today, and thought it was a way to explain IA, without
the cold jargony business feeling. Mr, Garber thinks describes it with
more of a purposeful, artistic feeling. A feeling that makes you feel as
if being an IA, you're really a part of something bigger. An "Invisible
Artist."

Thoughts on this take on the field's work?

A snippet:
"Become the work. For sites to reach their full potential, information
architects must become the work and create form from chaos. In order to
reach this fertile state of creativity, courageous IAs must give up their
pseudo-scientific delusions and make a visionary leap inside the project."

Coming from a "creative" background, this take on the field feels good to
me, personally.
Apologies if you already saw this a couple months back when it came out.
Otherwise, enjoy.
http://www.designinteract.com/insights/032702/


~brian christiansen

[ http://briandigital.com ]

Content Management Symposium, Chicago O'Hare Marriott, June 28 - 30.
See http://www.asis.org/CM

ASIST SIG IA: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIA/index.html
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