Reading Response
Chapter 2 of “Artful Design” touched upon the balance that music, as a proxy for art, provides to offset our human tendencies. This chapter resonated with me particularly strongly, because this weekend I participated in a calligraphy artist retreat in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Ge’s extrapolation of music to the entire universe seamlessly intertwined with my conversations this weekend with master calligraphers and craftspeople. Artful Design describes music as what “…gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, [and] life to everything” (p. 60). I immediately thought about how Bahman Panihi, a Persian master calligrapher and musicalligrapher, thinks about traditional Islamic calligraphy. In fact, when we practiced strokes and dots (naktas), every dot was a “note”, and the entire calligraphic composition was a harmonious rhythm. For example, to draw ‘•• ••’, Bahman would refer to the sequence as “dun dun silence dun dun” – equating each dot to a note. We even discussed the way to cut the bamboo qalam, pen, to the correct angle. There is a beat, a sound, associated with every cut, and the correctly angled cut has a certain note. A master calligrapher can tell if a student cut their qalam correctly just from the sound. Artful Design then discusses how deeply music permeates within us. In fact, “if one listens to the wrong kind of music, they become the wrong kind of person (pg 60). The similarity to traditional calligraphy arose again – when one feels stressed, depressed, anxious, or sad, those feelings come out in the letters. The relationship between art and the self stems from a deep, psychological connection humans have to their art – and we can see this clearly through Ge’s explanation of music and my experience with Islamic calligraphy. Ge’s explanation of “rhythm and harmony find[ing] their way into the soul” made me think of how harmonious and rhythmic calligraphers need to be. Calligraphy is music! On a different note, as the chapter progresses, Artful Design dives deeper into the tools we use, specifically, the computer. It discusses how the purpose of a computer is to help you do something else! And often, these other things can be beautiful and amazing. However, this assertion made me realize that we often don’t talk about computers being beautiful and amazing in themselves They are not inherently satisfying to use – if you weren’t trying to create something else, you likely wouldn’t use your computer. This could be true of all tools, but it was a realization that struck me. I only use my computer to achieve some other goal, but never to simply explore what a computer itself is. Lastly, the discussion around toys being “devoid of purpose” reminded me of my friend’s design research (p 79). His work focuses on the research question: “Why do people stop playing?” and aims to re-introduce play to adults and those affected by trauma. We often think of toys solely for play, and thus, solely for children, while simultaneously assuming them to be useless. Why do we assume that things for children are useless? Is that because children do not have purchasing power in our current markets? There’s so much research – both scientific and anecdotal evidence – of the unbelievable power of play and toys on development, yet we do not honor them as such. How can we simultaneously design toys that bring joy to everyone, not just children, while elevating their societal connotations?