Music 256a Reading Response 5, Fall 2021
Ray Gifford


Chapter 5: Interface Design:


I'll be responding to Artful Design Principle 5.2: "There is an aesthetic to interaction", from chapter 5 of Artful Design.
It's interesting to think about human interaction with design. Particularly if you are designing something that you hope others will interact with. For me, putting thought into interaction is when the process begins to feel more like designing a product and less like a random design interest.

The idea that physical instruments tend to have the same interface, and are in some regard predictable enough to learn on, is interesting to me as well. While they do change subtly from day to day, they stay pretty much the same. They age, degrade, cure, and develop differently over time... where those subtle day-to-day differences settle in over longer periods. Anyways... now I'm wondering if the brain is an interface, and it has me thinking a bit about the "brain in a vat" concept... again... and simulation theory.

Principle 5.4: "bodies matter". Yeah. Maybe. Maybe, I'm a reincarnation of you. Maybe you are actually something else, and you are being tested on earth... interacting with yourself, as past and future incarnations; and maybe your goal is to reach Nirvana. And maybe the absence of clicking, pulling, shaking, plucking, bowing, and twisting is exactly what's needed for a different interaction with your incarnations. Maybe sitting blindly, and silently, with your incarnations, is what you need to interface with your own deeper feelings and thoughts. Lol. Idk. It's late.