Reading Response #1

to Artful Design — Chapter 1: "Design Is ________"

Ethan Buck

10/3/2023

Music 256A, Stanford University

Reading Response: The (Art of) Design (of Art)

From this week's reading, I'd like to respond to Artful Design Principle 1.12, which states:

Principle 1.12: Design is Artful Engineering

This principle sets up a dichotomy between “pure art” (a thing that has some intrinsic beauty) and “engineering” (the way that a thing works) and positions “artful design” as an intermediary between these two ends. That is, artful design is the beauty in the way something works. 

I really like this way of describing artful design, but I also find this dichotomy between “pure art” and “engineering” philosophically challenging. At the risk of being pedantic (and potentially violating Meta-Principle 1.4), I wonder what it means for a thing to be considered “pure art.” From the dichotomy, to be considered “pure art,” something would need to have an intrinsic beauty but lack in engineering, as otherwise said thing would be considered “artful design.” The candidates for “pure art” that come to mind (paintings, sculptures, pieces of music, etc.) absolutely fulfill the prerequisite of having intrinsic beauty, but I find it less obvious to say that these things lack appreciable design. In most cases, an artist has an idea of what they want their work to evoke, and they create (or engineer) their work according to that goal. In this way, I have a hard time labeling these works as “pure art.”

At this point, this semantic confusion might be cleared up with a clarification that Ge mentioned in Monday's class: the concept of design may be better suited for the materialization of tools, not art. Still, this hang-up is further reinforced in Principle 1.14 (Design is the Art of Humanizing Technology) which stresses the notion that anything can be designed, as things are made to do something to an audience. Art, in its own way, is a tool to invoke feeling into others. With this understanding, I feel it would be a disservice to label an artwork as “pure art” as it neglects the artist’s consideration of delivery and reception of their artwork. Even when Miles Davis turns his back towards the audience in a live concert, seemingly a decision isolated from the audience, this still is an intentional choice that shapes the audience’s reception of the show. (It is often speculated that Miles did this to challenge the “entertainer” archetype that stems from the grotesque tradition of minstrelsy and Blackface in the US, which also speaks to Miles’ social and moral-ethical considerations.)

With this, it seems to me that the only candidates that approach the plane of “pure art” are strictly naturally-occurring phenomena that we derive beauty from—a mountain, the stars, sunlight, a romanesco broccoli. These are evaluated subjectively and are considered beautiful by many, but they are not engineered in the same sense that human-made creations are. It does beg the question about evolution and design, however, since naturally-occurring phenomena exist solely because of evolution. French biologist Francois Jacob noted that evolution was a tinkerer, not an inventor; that is, evolutionary features are not methodically engineered but rather thrown against a wall to see what sticks. I wonder where this idea of tinkering fits into the framework of artful design. Do humans tinker? Can human tinkering produce such stunning emergent properties as are found in nature?

Design Etude:

Object 1. Heelys

As someone who has never owned a pair of Heelys, I feel slightly unqualified to perform this analysis, but as someone who always dreamed of wearing a pair of Heelys, I feel nonetheless compelled to. For anyone who missed out on the cornerstone US elementary school Y2K aesthetic, Heelys are shoes that double as roller skates (oh, and they sometimes light up). They are renowned for their twofold function (as shoes and a wheel-based method of transportation), but I feel that this design is beautiful because the multifunctional nature feeds into Heelys’ aesthetic. We are now far removed from elementary school, but Heelys still carry a sense of cool, playful nonchalant-ness. Since the wheels effectively disappear when walking normally, Heelys display themselves as any other sneaker, but they moonlight as a teleportation device to Friday night at a roller rink. As a means-to-an-end, Heelys fulfill the typical shoe-related duties—traction and protection for navigating the world on our feet. As an end-in-itself, however, Heelys facilitate movement in our surroundings, and by extension observation, from a completely different (and far more playful) perspective. 

Kitchen Item 2. Chopsabers

I received these as a birthday gift from a friend in high school, and I have rarely used other pairs of chopsticks since. Unlike the Heelys, the LED inside the clear plastic chopstick serves no functional purpose. It is purely an aesthetic flourish that I fell hook, line, and sinker for. Even as a less-than-avid Star Wars fan, I find this utensil’s design to be beautiful in its simple abstraction of an everyday item that most are incredibly familiar with. It appeals to our childhood imagination that searches for alter egos in everyday objects—a saucepan is a knight’s helmet, a spoon is a sword, an oven mitt is a shield. Why can’t a chopstick be a lightsaber? As a means-to-an-end Chopsabers, though ever so slightly unwieldy, comparably accomplish the manipulation of food stuff that traditional chopsticks set the precedent for. As an end-in-itself, however, Chopsabers allow us to battle broccoli stems, parry with potatoes, and ward off wontons. Like Heelys, Chopsabers reframe everyday encounters (movement for Heelys, eating for Chopsabers) in a way that centers play and imagination.e

City Design 3. Manhattan Grid System

Moving away from beauty as a non-optimal functional or aesthetic appeal to our innate appreciation of play, I propose Manhattan’s system of St’s and Ave’s as a design that is beautiful in its simplicity. While I constantly wonder how people found anything before the existence of Google Maps, I feel somewhat confident that I could meander my way to an address in Manhattan without consulting my phone. The placement of east-west streets and north-south avenues to create a logical, numerical grid often makes me wonder why my hometown of Iowa City uses places (Iowa Ave), people (Benton St), and religious historical references (Mormon Trek Way???) to aid direction. With that said, there is something both endearing and beautiful about non-numerical street names like the ones in my hometown. While I find Manhattan’s simplicity yet unrelenting functionality very elegant, this optimization likely bears an effect on the city’s culture. The NYC aesthetic of people constantly moving quickly towards a destination is no doubt facilitated by the grid system. (As an aside, it is interesting to speculate the extent to which the hustle-bustle culture and the optimized grid layout informed each other.) In any case, I see a very valid place for street names that evoke more feeling than the numbers 1-288 (though some of those numbers are quite fun). To be sure, what streets like “Wild Prairie” and “Goldenrod” possess in charming description, they certainly lack in navigation information. But, some poet somewhere said something about straying from the beaten path, so I’ll take their word for it.