MUSIC 256A: WEEK 1
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Artful Design Chapter 1: Design Is _______
Principle 1.12: Design Is Artful Engineering
“Different from engineering and pure art, design incorporates both in balance, capable of usefulness and of being more than itself. A synthesis of art and engineering, design is its own craft.”
To be entirely honest, the concept of “design” has always felt kind of vacuous to me. When I’ve encountered it in the past, it’s felt like a prescribed way of thinking, a step-by-step guide to “being human” in engineering. I’ve never resonated with the cleanliness I associated with it, that I thought meant prioritizing maximum efficiency over personal expression. Redefining design as something between pure art and objective engineering makes it something more open-ended, something that, to me, feels messier, which I love.
This principle defines design as the “synthesis of art and engineering,” but I came away from this chapter seeing design as more than an intersection of fields, but as a governing attitude. Defining design as the field of “humanizing technology” implies that design builds off of a technological basis; however, I read design as a guiding principle that affects the mundane in all its forms. Design principles are present in home-cooked food, the composition of a painting, and the way a room is. (I guess this whole tension centers around what we define as technology.) Design is present in the art of the everyday as much as it is present in engineering feats.
“When art, engineering, and humanities are understood in synthesis, the need for distinction disappears; they naturally meld into a singular pursuit, drawing as needed from its constituent disciplines.”
I’m reminded of my embarrassingly frequent Google searches for “artists who are also engineers” in a desperate attempt to feel sane in my pursuits (big shoutout to Hedy Lamarr and Brian May’s Wikipedia pages for the validation).
I really resonate with the idea of dissolving labels around disciplines. I’m an electrical engineering major who’s painted her whole life and doesn’t plan to stop. I feel like most people assume I’m living a story of passion vs. practicality, but I’ve never felt like I’m compromising on one pursuit to do the other. I actually feel like I wouldn’t like either one as much without the other. The math I do grounds me in a process, in paying attention to details, while my painting lets me loosen up.I think about the way portraiture and signal processing feel the same to me, both ways I can peel back beautiful systems and reconstruct them.
That duality is something I have to explain every time I apply to an art grant or an engineering job, and my answer is different every time. I’ve always struggled with justifying the utility of my art, to others and to myself, when my engineering practice is all about accessibility of education and technologies, but my art practice feels so self-involved. I think that attitude comes from the idea that art and engineering are separate, connected only by intentional “interdisciplinary” pursuits. In that paradigm, my art and engineering are in tension with each other, but in the paradigm of artful design, they work in perfect harmony — they make total sense together.
Design Etude
Masala Dabba
When I started moving around during the pandemic, I decided to get my own spice container after my mom’s. Every South Asian family I know always has this staple container at hand, with seven little pots I use for common household spices I need for almost every meal I know how to make. The dabba usually comes with a small metal spoon that I forgot at home this year, but just pretend it’s in there. It’s durable, convenient, and easy to transport. I don’t have to fish through spice cabinets or open and close lids — just one container for my essentials.
The layout is so simple — nothing is particularly mind-blowing or unique — but the fact that every masala dabba I have ever seen comes comes in the exact same design is incredible. Its design is universal and iconic because it’s so perfect. The removable pots make refills effortless, and the metal is both durable and comforting, reminding me of the metal plates and cups I see at home, in my grandparents’ homes, and in my favorite South Indian restaurants. Catch me in twenty years and I’ll probably be using the same container I bought at my local New India Bazaar in June 2020.
Milk Crate
NOTHING I have ever seen is as effortlessly and beautifully multipurpose as the milk crate. My junior year, I lived in a cooperative house that ordered food in large deliveries that often arrived in these black and green and blue crates. As they accumulated outside our kitchen, I started using them for everything. My bookshelf was a stack of milk crates, my daybed cushion was elevated by a platform of milk crates, and my extra supplies were tucked away in milk crates at the back of my closet. I wish I had a picture of this, but even my bed consisted of a mattress on top of a dais of about twenty milk crates. Perfectly stackable, lightweight, and durable, milk crates made my move-in process infinitely easier. The way they fit into each other not only makes for good storage, but also gives me confidence in the durability of my DIY bookshelf and shoe rack.
I love the neutral tones of these milk crates, and, most of all, the open lattice means that they don’t dominate my room. A normal bookshelf or storage box would very visibly look like a solid cube. I’d have to think about what color and material I’d like best, but these milk crates almost disappear into my decor, letting walls and light and decorations show through. I love the way they look in my room and how modular they are. If I get more books throughout the year, I can just throw another crate on top. If I need more storage space on my desk, I can rearrange them easily. If anyone reading this lives near a discarded stack of milk crates, go grab as many as you can. Trust me!!!!
Carpal (Wrist) Bones
Hands, besides facial features, are arguably the most emotive and most human part of the body. I’ve always been interested in expression through hands, how they can embody beauty and grotesqueness and movement in such an elegant way. I took a hand surgery introsem a few years ago, where I first started to learn about the incredible anatomy of the hand.
I guess the human wrist was never really designed in the traditional sense, but I find its structure so beautiful. The wrist is made up of eight small bones in two rows that fit together like a 3-D puzzle. These bones are “designed” so that when we move our wrist, they are able to adjust and stay in place, allowing us the huge freedom of movement that lets us do so much. Some bones are connected in a way that allows for the thumb (that accounts for about 45% of hand functionality) to move the way it does; some connect to ligaments in our forearms; some hold our metacarpal bones in place. Though I don’t remember all the details I once learned (and maybe have some errors in this blurb), the perfect cooperation of the carpal bones has stuck in my mind for so many years; this system is so beautiful and so taken for granted in our every day lives.
Guerrilla Design
I love making art, but I never think about the way I present it. I tried to rearrange my paintings and room decor to create a story around eyes.
ChucK Exercise
I played off of the ChucK stereo_noise.ck example to try and create a stereo ocean wave generator. I”m hoping to spend more time on it later on to make the waves sound more realistic by creating better bell curves to model gain, stereo panning, and the sound of water. The audio linked below was made by starting several overlapped shreds of the wave generator.
wave_week1.ck
Noise s => Pan2 p => dac;
Math.random2f(1,1000)/1000 => float orig_g;
orig_g => s.gain => float g;
0.0 => float t;
30::ms => dur T;Math.random2f(5,30) => float finish_count;
0 => float wave_count;while(true) {
if (Math.sin(t) >= 0) {
Math.sin(t) => p.pan;
Math.sin(t) => s.gain;
0.15*Math.sin(t) => g;
} else {
g*Math.exp(-0.05) => g;
g => s.gain;
}
//<<< wave_count, finish_count >>>;
T/second *2.5 +=> t;
T => now;
}
