Jasmine Jones

24 October 2021

MUSIC 256A

Reading Response 5: The Art of the Interface

This week, I'd like to take the time to respond to a principle that seems to have popped up multiple times as a subtle theme in this course. This comes in the form of Principle 5.12 in Chapter 5 of Artful Design. The principle states:

“Make a piece, not an instrument or controller”

I interpreted this as a connection to themes we have seen in previous Artful Design readings, where we are encouraged to push the boundaries of computers and the music we can make with it when it might feel most natural to resemble something we already know. We see a great example of this in Perry Cook’s coffee mug, a playful piece that invites the user to immediately start making music, following the principle of “instant music, subtlety later”. I find pieces like Cook’s coffee mug admirable because they are sticking to the principle of not just being an instrument or controller, but a creative piece. I think as someone who is beginning to design, it’s very easy to have our first instinct be to replicate something that we’ve already seen, or conform to standards of what we think the design we’re going for “should look like”. This leads to cases where we are indeed making an instrument or controller. It seems characteristic of novel, exciting designs to make pieces in the sense that they go beyond the set boundaries of an instrument or controller that already exists. They make use of mediums we wouldn’t expect, are fantastical in nature, or take a spin on unlikely objects. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to make interfaces and designs in the spirit of instruments that already exist, but I do think we get something truly magical when we step out of this comfort and explore our mediums to create an interface that might not have otherwise been imaginable!

Now that we are starting our Homework #3 where we implement a sequencer, I have really been trying to internalize this principle when coming up with my possible designs. Of course it’s most natural for me to consider a grid-based, click-to-toggle sequencer that was similar to ones I used growing up, but the spirit of the course has encouraged me to push the boundaries of what I can come up with. To be on track to design a piece, a sleek yet artful interface between user and computer, I have been thinking about how to utilize Unity, ChucK, and the GUI uniquely in order to create a playful and interesting end product. I haven’t quite figured out what it would look like yet, but I’m hoping that with a little more engagement with existing material and aesthetics that speak to me, I’ll be able to pull together some ideas that embody the principles I’ve been reading about over the past weeks!