Grant Bishko

Music 256a: Reading Response Chapter 8

11/13/2021

Manifesto: A Philosophy of Artful Design (and Coda)

“Plato’s allegory of the cave is no less thought-provoking today, except it might be furnished with espresso machines, computer screens, mobile devices, virtual reality, robots, drones, and artifacts in our technology-mediated life. They dance like shadows on the cave walls, cast from the first of scientific and technological progress. But until we know to look for the humanness and meaning within and beyond these material manifestations, they remain no more than shadows.” (p. 404)

This quote really struck me. I learned about Plato’s allegory of the cave back in freshman year in the context of an english/philosophy class. I haven’t thought about it since then, but this quote was absolutely thought-provoking. What if we are STILL in the cave? What if we are truly still missing the reality of life, so entranced and distracted by our new technology that “frees” us, that we are incapable of turning around and seeing the real world for what it really is. Scarier thought: what is that real world then? Nature? Human connection? Love? We experience all of these within our cave, but maybe it is only authentic when not glued to our phones and obsessed with our self-image on social media. We must escape!

From this final reading, I found the idea of Categorical Imperative quite fascinating and honestly quite appealing.  I think we should all learn to “do A because A is good in itself, not do A in order to achieve B”. This feels like a great philosophy to live by. I would love to learn to find the beauty in small things, do and create things because they are good and bring me joy. Not for any specific purpose or reason that could tint the beauty of it. Maybe our final projects for this class can apply to that. My idea of spatialized sound in a 3D space that you can walk around can absolutely be an example of categorical imperative: it can exist for the sole purpose of playful art, for a story and space that we can experience.

This reading also made me think about my career path and my passions. I know that I want to study and pursue the intersection of music and tech, but I have no idea how that will come into fruition. Ge and the philosopher talk about the idea of Robot Musicians in this chapter, and this interests me.  If we do create  successful and “artful” music robots, will they break the zeroth law of robotics? If they harm musicians’ jobs?? I am conflicted about this, because on one hand I would love to figure out some technology (AI? ML?) that can write and perform music ( maybe the process of coding is art in itself), but I would only  do it if I knew that it would never replace real musicians. At the end of the day, the arts are something so inherently human that replicating this with technology seems so impossible. Maybe it can be for artists to create new art together with these robots. I’m not sure, I’m spiraling. My goal is to become a humanist engineer as a “pi-shaped” individual: Stanford will help me with that, as I continue to study both Music and CS! Who knows what the future holds!?