“Meta factors” are the complex, ambiguous, and largely qualitative (or at least very tricky to quantify) factors behind our experience of everything in art, science, commerce, and civics.
Think of it as building on the field of human factors — applied not just to subjects and potential users but to the researchers and designers themselves.
It involves:
- ideas about our ideas
- methods for evaluating methods
- the discipline of developing new disciplines…
The term is new but the idea & practice are as old as philosophy. In a sense, meta factors is philosophy — stripped of its historical connotations and rendered more effective for today’s challenges & opportunities.
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I wonder how far this can be extended without changing it? For example, a friend of mine is a choreographer, and her work is largely about the experience of dancing. That makes it hard for people to appreciate sometimes, because they’re so used to “seeing” dance that is about something else. Her work really needs to be danced to be understood fully. It’s dancing about dance. Same thing with the abstract expressionist painters. To some degree, their work was really about the experience of painting. It was painting about painting.
This is really interesting… A lot of the people who find this site (or the twitter account I’m squatting on) assume this is about conceptual art. I like that, long overdue to pursue that aspect.
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