Reading Response #2

to Artful Design, Chapter 2

Richard L.

Oct 3, 2023

Music 256a, Stanford University

Principle 2.6 - Technology should create calm

The premise that technology should be designed to incite serenity reminds me a lot of my own morals that intertwine with music and wellness. To make music is to be make something that is of the essence of someone that is able to be encapsulated and released. To allow wellness is to promote an understanding of what makes us feel full, capable, able, and free with ourselves and with others. To design technology that creates calm seems to feed on these similar outlets of catalyzing fortitude, empathy, and steadiness - we can seek to create systems that are joyous and make everyone involved feel full.

Calmness is a tricky state though - for everyone it make look a little different. For some calmness is a state achieved with others, for others it's a state of stillness, for some it is movement. It's also tricky to say whether calmness is birthed from a state of chaos, or can be found in chaos. For myself, some of the periods I've felt the most calm is when I've been at a concert. In light of blaring sounds, large crowds, and strobe lights, there is serenity and stillness to the waving and standing; it feels pleasant, ego relieving, and jubilant to be in the presence of such high energy. Other times, the feeling of calmness feels most evoked by complete silence. A recent endeavor into an hour long meditation realized and relieved the chatter of all my thoughts at once. There's often so much chaos in the world that the only way to quell it is to be in touch with ourselves and feel through our senses fully. The premise that calmness comes from silence can be both intimidating and relieving - there's so much noise that sometimes the best signal for peace is a low level one.

In connection with the Aaru video, it seems that calmness can come from technology creating clarity. An environment that feels natural, evocative, vast, sprawling, and peaceful (despite the context of the game itself) can perhaps create a sense of calmness through a complete embedding of the player, or character, in its essence. Despite the world in this environment, as with all technology, being man made, it was made, with intention, to be calming. A world that can be completely embodying of someone, while also being of the body, visceral, can be beautifully calming (similar to how I've felt in concerts!).

In conversation with Principle 2.6 I like to think about what it's like to evoke calmness in myself and others. When I design interactions I require empathy for how someone may feel differently from myself, while identifying how I feel myself, and then trying to mediate some element of optimizing for serenity between us all. For any reader of this reading response I invite you to ask yourself: what makes me feel calm? To what extent do I want to see be seen/heard/felt/enjoy to be calm? What would I do to make someone, including myself, feel calm?

I think from there, with well intentions, systems are technologically created to create calmness.