Week 1: reading response
Week 2: reading response
Week 3: reading response
Week 4: reading response
Week 5: reading response
Week 6: reading response
Week 7: reading response
Week 8: reading response
Week 9: reading response
After reading Chapter 1’s principles on design, I would like to do two things in the Chapter 1 reflection: inductively think about what “artful design” is and deductively think about what “artful design” is from a dual-aspect monistic ontology perspective.

When I refer to inductive thinking, I mean the process of a bottom-up collection of information that the book “Artful Design” aims to indoctrinate me with. In the book "Artful Design", the enumeration of the principle, listed as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3..., is actually an inductive narrative to approach what artful design is. It tries to use a narrative, introducing a group of favorable daily objects, to summarize their common aspects, like using a pencil case and Etude 1 exercise. This type of organizing the chapter conforms to the design principle of definition 1.2, where it states, “... creative design is bottom-up...”. So, it's quite interesting that the design of Chapter 1 also embodies the principle the chapter wants to convey.

The principle that resonates with me the most is actually Principle 1.3: Artful design contains material, structural, interactive, emotional/psychological, social, and moral-ethical dimensions. Since I am fortunate enough to be exposed to cognitive neuroscience research and its paradigms, I would like to translate these words/phrases into more cognitive neuroscience terms. “Material”, as suggested, relates more to the sensation & perception functions of the nervous system. The structural aspect is linked to Gestalt Principles, which discuss how the continuous and multimodal stream of information combines together to form a cohesive unity. The theory of auditory scene analysis pertains to this level’s term. “Interactive” means the ability of a brain to do semantic extraction on an object, then store it as an operable concept in the brain that can alter the state of other objects. It represents a transition in the cognitive finite state machine. For “Emotional/psychological”, “social”, and “moral-ethical”, these represent higher levels of cognitive abilities that use the medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala compared to the previous ‘material’, ‘structural’, and ‘interactive’ logical reasoning. According to the chapter, the idea of being artful could appear on any of the six dimensions. For example, an artful ‘material’ design could be simply an aromatic perfume or tactile stimuli from an ergonomic chair. An artful “social” design could be a self-service registrar at Walmart for those who are introverted.

In my opinion, when we start any type of philosophical speculation on a specific concept, it is always good to provide a definitive statement rather than descriptive statements. Deductively thinking, the definition of artful design for me should be “anything that makes me feel I am living in the world” or “anything that will heal my existential crisis”. I particularly like two concepts in the East-Asian Confucian cultural cycle: one is called 留白 (leave with void) from Chinese culture and 侘寂 (wabi-sabi) (わびさび) (acceptance of imperfection and sorrow) from Japanese culture. They both stress that the existence of an entity, even the concept of void or sorrow, is an experience – an experience that demonstrates we are living in the world. So, anything that expresses a strong existential tendency could be described as artful design, or anything that shows some sign that some homo sapien has been here, it is artful. Etude 1.

Part 1.

(1) My hand
(2) My external hard-drive attached 128gb storage macbook
(3) Airposds pro 2
Part 2.

My Hand

The prerequisite for every “functional” thing in the world is our human hand. Without this 'ultimate functional apparatus,’ no design can be created. So here is a question: who created this hand? Though the answer could be my father and mother, if we recursively ask this question, we will eventually stop at one point... or not. Here we encounter intelligent design.

My MacBook Pro (128GB) with Taped External Hard Drive (2TB, Yes)

The design of the 128GB MacBook Pro in Apple's product line is quite terrible because the 128GB will be used up immediately after you install a small number of software applications. It is not elegant! However, I resolved this with my cyber-punk aesthetic design with a 2TB hard drive. The functionality of the MacBook Pro is restored! It's my own interpretation of “low-cost DIY aesthetics.”

AirPod Pro 2

I say the AirPod Pro 2 design is the best because its active noise reduction technique saved my sleep when I was in my dorm! Without the ergonomic body design of the AirPod Pro 2 and the noise reduction technique, I would probably fail everything in a day due to a bad mental state. This is the most elegant industrial product I have acquired this year.

// sine random gen // Benny 300::ms => dur noteDur; // note duration [440.0, 659.2551138257398, 880.0, 1046.5022612023945, 1244.5079348883237, 1396.9129257320155, 1864.6550460723597] @=> float chord[]; [-200.0, -120.0,600.0,400.0, -900,0, -434.0, 1.0] @=> float basefreq[]; // Unit Generator SinOsc osc => dac; osc.gain(0.5); for (0 => int i; i < 7; i++) { chord[0] + basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; chord[1] + basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; chord[2] + basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; chord[3]+ basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; chord[4]+ basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; chord[5] + basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; chord[6]+ basefreq[i] => osc.freq; // Advance time to play the note noteDur => now; }