Music 256a hw3
Reading response
Principle 3.11. Pragmatics: “It’s Gotta Read!”
While reading Chapter 3 of Artful Design, one guiding takeaway from the design of Ocarina caught my eye — the idea of something being understood without added explanation.
In most aspects of design for use or for any one particular function, this seems like a pretty important principle. Sometimes the best tools really are the simplest ones — that is, the ones that don’t require further clarification or justification because they’re just so incredibly intuitive. Such designs often take advantage of existing mental models or senses of familiarity that to explain it further would almost seem redundant. Some examples that come to mind are like pull doors with horizontal bars vs. push doors with flat panels, keys of a keyboard, or even the touchscreen of an iPhone. These designs read almost immediately because they almost don’t even afford any other way of interacting with them. For instance, if a door has a flat panel, there’s quite literally nothing to mistakenly grab and pull on by accident, leaving you with the only option of pushing it. Hooray! No more awkwardly pulling on push doors or accidentally walking into pull doors! Of course, these are all familiar examples that we’ve studied in courses like CS147 or CS247 studios — courses that are almost always focused on needs-based designs.
Design vs. art?
I wonder, however, if the same goes for art itself. Perhaps this thought hinges on how we define art vs. design or whether they’re the same or whether they have occasional moments of overlap. I think there are valid arguments to be made that art and design are one and the same and that all design is artful and that all art is designed. As we’ve touched on in this class, I think this textbook really gets at that idea. However, for the sake of this discussion, I’m going to treat art and design as distinct, or at least semi-distinct entities. Let’s consider design as something needed for interaction and function, and art as something that can standalone without the need for such interactions or functions. For example, I’ll say that a painting hanging in a museum is art.
Given this clarification, is it necessarily true that art must read as well?
This is often a question I confront when I go to art museums, usually contemporary / modern art exhibits with friends or family. This is because, occasionally, you’ll enter an art room with a huge 8x8ft canvas all painted in white — no people, no flowers, no bowls of fruit depicted. Just a solid color. More often than not, someone will say, “What’s that doing in here? How’s that art?” or even, “I could’ve made that myself!” These are all valid questions in themselves, and maybe they’re even the sorts of questions the artist intended to spur with their pieces. However, I think you could argue that these pieces don’t read… at all.
Some pieces are even straight up odd like a comically-sized dining room table and chairs or a stop motion film that captures unintelligible shots. Sometimes, these pieces almost necessitate that you read the artist’s description and intention in order to understand them, and a lot of the times, it’s these written placards that add lots of meaning and depth to the works. Personally, I find that sometimes it’s even these descriptions that make me like the art more than the piece itself — something about thinking about the artist’s clever intentions and how they realized them in this medium, even if I don’t particularly find the art that aesthetically pleasing on its own.
Is making just you think “art” enough? Even if the artist’s intentions don’t necessarily read?
This raises the question that if art must read, to whom should it read?
To elite academics who are well-versed in art history? To wealthy art appraisers? To blue collar workers? To children in kindergarten?
Arguably, these are all violations of Principle 3.11! This isn’t to say that the book suggests that all of these principles are hard and fast rules, but I think it is a potentially interesting distinction between art and design (should one exist). In some cases, additional explanation seems like it defeats the purpose of a design whereas in other cases, it feels like these explanations can enhance them.