according to wikipedia, “site specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork.”

take michelangelo, for example. the man did plenty of paintings and sculptures that were not in any way site specific; works that could hang on any museum’s or collector’s wall. but he also covered the ceilings of the sistine chapel with biblical frescos that were both specific to and influenced by the site. though finished long before site specificity would officially join the list of “isms”, this piece is undeniably site specific.

jump ahead several centuries, to the mid 1970s. artists coin the phrase “site specific”, and the phrase becomes a part of every art students’ critique vocabulary. after all, isn’t it part of the creator’s responsibility to consider audience, scale and medium? and what determines these variables more than site?

jump ahead another several decades. another site joins the list of potentials – the virtual site. but, despite common perception, the virtual site is not one site, one medium, one audience. virtual mediums are not like museums, and what works on the internet church’s ceiling won’t work on the iphone’s light screen won’t work on the desktop’s cave wall. so let’s stop treating applications as site-universal and start designing them like the media-specific creations they are.