Reading Response: week 3

Jaeyong(Jay) Park
10.28.2021
Music 256A / CS476a, Stanford University

 


Reading response

In Chapter 3 of Artful Design, Ge highlights that components of design should interact with each other, which in turn creates personality and makes the user feel something. (Principle 3.3, and 3.12) I was intrigued by Converge, an Omni-biographical audiovisual composition by Ge and Jieun Oh, a software that perfectly executes the above principles. Converge collects photographs from ordinary life, gives it life by assigning time which continues to tick backward from the present. All the photos generate a spiral in which represents memory and life. All the components are in sync and create a sense of awe and nostalgia for its users.

I want to apply these concepts to my sequencer. While reading this chapter, I thought of ways to apply the material to my project. My initial idea before reading the chapter was to create a racing track where the user would drag and drop cars that would go in loops. Each car would represent an instrument and by creating collectibles on the track, when the car takes the collectible, a sound would be generated and thus work as a sound sequencer. As I thought about the personality of this sequencer, I realized that the sequencer would be functional as a sequencer, but not emotion-provoking. I realized how difficult it is to imbue personality and to create fun elements similar to that of Ge's Soundpeek where even kids could intuitively understand what is going on and would be eager to test it out making various noises. Despite Soundpeek and Converge both being straightforward ideas, they have specific design choices that were made deliberately that instill a feeling in the users. As I thought of racing cars, I realized how little I knew about racing tracks and how little emotional attachment I had to them. If I were to develop the racing track idea, I should start with what I like about cars and racing tracks so that I can first have the attachment to the project myself.