February 17, 2003
MarkBernstein.org
 

Aesthetics

Reviewing a program is sometimes like trying to review an entire museum or an entire city. There's too much to consider properly, and so you're left with consumer reportage, a shallow judgment about the value of the whole mishmash.

Tekka is going to attempt a different approach. We don't care about what to buy; we're interested in the ideas. That means software critics don't need to make sweeping overviews of an entire program, but can think about specific features or ponder the implications of what the software is trying to achieve.

In the pilot issue, I take a brief look at the aspirations of Painter, a graphic editing program that competes with Photoshop. We don't care whether you ought to buy Painter or Photoshop: if you need them, buy both! (Should you buy Shakespeare or Wilde? Milton, or malt?)

What's most interesting about Painter is its loving recreation of natural media -- oil paint that smears and blends, watercolor that drips and soaks into the paper, pastel so chalky you can feel it scratching against coarse paper. Often, this kind of artificial simulation of honest material proves tawdry, leading to wood-grain vinyl and Disney Main Streets. In software, though, is lets us think about paint and paper in a new way, letting us free ourselves selectively from familiar constraints of gravity, diffusion, and chemistry than confine the art materials we normally buy or make.