kalyrama's blog

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Name: Rave Stage

Description: Rave Stage is an audiovisual instrument. What if one person could be the musician and lighting controller, all at once? This interactive visual provides that, with they keyboard as the medium of choice. The keys play different sounds and map to different lighting, and the user can behold different combinations of colors, angles, and lighting combinations until audiovisual patterns start to emerge!

I’m not sure if I agree with Artful Design’s principle 8.4: Technology without poetry is but a blunt instrument. While the premise of course makes sense, since all human endeavors ultimately feed into the broader human experience, the wording seems too vague to actually delineate technology in a meaningful way. Is it possible to find an instance of technology that is not ultimately poetic? Take Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a brute tool that seemingly removes the human aspect of its mission while capitalizing on humans completely. One can argue that there exists poetry in Amazon’s mission to scale human value, while trying to strip it away at the same time.

I’m reflecting on Artful Design’s Principle 7.4, and its claim that usefulness, fullness of expression, authenticity, and transparency of use make a valuable social tool. While these four tenets make sense on the surface level, I wonder how individual users can ascribe their own usages onto a social tool. Take, for example, Facebook. Ignoring the glaring elephant in the room about transparency, one could argue that Facebook is an incredibly valuable social tool because it allows you to connect with other people more effectively, you can post anything you want, and we can authentically engage with others on the platform. However, as is the case for social media today, the authenticity factor starts to dwindle as more and more importance is placed on external validation.

I am drawn to Artful Design’s concepts of Ludus and Paidia in game design. When I think of what makes a game pleasurable, it involves two things - competition and exploration. Competition probably falls under Ludus; it has a strict goal, stimulates the player, contains a set of rules as a guiding structure of actions, and is generally striving to complete some end. Exploration is a little trickier to think about. At first glance, it seems like exploration cleanly falls under Paidia, since it is often improvised playing without an immediate goal. However, these categories also feel like they can have significant overlap.

I am interested in Artful Design’s Principle 5.4: Bodies Matter! The idea that our body is the ultimate instrument is true right now, and it’s interesting to reflect on how this concept has transformed over years of technological development. We of course started creating music with our voice and hands and limbs, and technology has opened up the scope of that. Page 210 displays some common methods of physical musical actions, like shaking, striking, plucking, tapping, sliding, and twisting. These all existed with rudimentary instruments, and the introduction of synthetic and electronic music has changed the game.

I am drawn to Artful Design’s Principle 4.5: Design things with a computer that would not be possible without! This design concept is one that I always try to employ when thinking about technology. Taking the example of the widespread switch into video conferencing, I’ve thought a lot about what integral elements of human communication are impossible to emulate over Zoom. While Zoom does have its limitations, I realized that it’s a lot more exciting to think about what Zoom communication can enable that we ordinarily would not be able to do in person. Tools like breakout rooms, screen sharing, screen overtaking, and even the ease of games exist, and it’s so important to realize that!