[1]
This is a response to Chapter 7 of Artful Design, Social
Design.
I will be responding to Principle 7.14: Whatever you do, do it
with
Authenticity
“Who is that out there?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Or is it enough simply to know it’s another person out
there?”
– pg. 362 of Artful Design
Chapter 7 starts by postulating a series of questions about the
social domain. If we are to consider a social system as a
function, where there is human input with the intention of being
heard by human output, is it “good enough” to know you have a
witness? Or must we know exactly
who it is out there? Social design, as explored in
Chapter 7, is concerned with the dynamics, qualities, and
authenticity of human-human interaction through the domain of
technology.
Games with a purpose (GWAPs) are an application of human
computation designed to explore the limits of computer
intelligence, and the limitless potential of human
intelligence. Though GWAPs utilize technological innovation, the
design is ultimately used by humans. Technology might be the
medium, the domain, but humanity is the donor and the recipient.
This is a school of thought which I will explore further in this
essay.
Before writing this response, I spent some time researching
The Human Condition; the essentials of human existence starting with birth,
growth, emotion, aspiration, conflict, and ultimately, accepting
mortality. In particular, the phrase
"The Human Condition" has been used by R&B artist Jon
Bellion for his 2016 album of the same name, and by Belgian
surrealist René Magritte to refer to a series of two paintings
which can be seen at the top of this webpage. In Jon Bellion’s
album, The Human Condition, he uses his voice as an
instrument in all manners – percussively, synthetically, and
chorally, to name a few. Bellion strips his album down to a key
element to embrace our common humanity: the voice. Magritte’s
paintings both contain a “real” landscape seen through a
window, an easel, and a canvas which covers part of the window
and depicts the hidden portion of the landscape; it is a classic
painting within a painting. One might easily conclude that the
fictitious canvas is simply a depiction of the portion of
landscape outside the window which is hidden from our view.
However, this interpretation is ultimately false as the entire
canvas, as it exists in our plane, is in fact all a fabrication
of reality. There is no difference between the
“real” imagery in the painting and the representation of
that reality on the easel; from our viewpoint, everything in the
painting is fictitious relative to everything outside the
painting. I believe that these two examples, one from a century
ago and one from only a few years ago, embody
Principle 7.14 of Artful Design, “whatever you do,
do it with authenticity,”. Though the works I have presented
appear to be complex deceptions, they are in fact the epitome of
designing for human connection as an end in itself. They may
exist in the technological sphere as music streams or digital
captures of oil canvases, but only a human is able to unwind the
complex entanglement of the human condition which they
explore.
As I finish the Music Sequencer assignment in Music 256A and
begin to think about the final assignment, I am continuing to
find a balance between the complexity of a task for both humans
and computers, while maintaining a wall of abstraction between
the complexity of a task for me, the designer, and that of the
general user.