In the Caroline Woolard guest presentation, she speaks on the distinction between art and social movements. Some of the groups she works with do not concern themselves directly with artwork at all. She spoke about the need for speed in this scenario: these social movements are concerned with current events happening in the world today, and those advocating for change demand the change immediately. They cannot wait for a long artistic process – they need to get their message across immediately. This struck a chord with me, because I have seen the same push/pull between artists and “management” throughout my life. Last summer, I worked as an iOS programmer for an SAT tutoring tech startup. Although I was a programmer, I was viewed along with the graphic designers as the “creative” side of the team. Almost every day, management would set unrealistic goals for us. In fact, the first day I joined the team was a Tuesday, and as I was going through my initial setup and training, they told me I needed to integrate an entire client-tutor messaging system by the time of the app’s release: on FRIDAY. I was unable to do it so quickly, but I worked long hours and went as quickly as I possibly could and was actually able to finish it by Saturday, and the app was released the following Monday. This is an extremely important process: if it were up to the programmers, the app would literally never be released. There’s always some new feature, some improvements in speed, or some bug fixes to be made. The perfect app isn’t possible. And if it were up to management, the app would be released immediately but would be shoddy with constant bugs. The relationship between them and the conflict that results is crucial. Although this is obviously a completely different scenario from the one Woolard is describing, there are certainly similarities.
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