This week we read Chapter 5: Interface Design from Ge’s book. I’ve broken down this response into a couple of parts I would specifically like to respond to.
Design With Physicality
This design principle seems to be the undercurrent of this chapter. The “mental model of a user” sketches reminded me of when I’d written one of my very first reading responses and considered all of the potential ways that a computer might be able to take in input — for every way that a computer could sense something, I tried to imagine what human body parts might fit to interact with that thing. I suppose I could have started with body parts and gone the other way, too! Though I’m not sure either is necessarily a better approach.
The concept of “mutualizing”, too, seems to be rooted in the idea of physicality. My understanding of what it means to mutualize is to make clear the connection between a physical interface and its resultant output. Part of the power (and curse?) of computer instrument design, then, is that it allows for the disembodiment of sound from physical structure. The power lies in the idea that once we’ve disentangled our inputs and outputs, we have autonomy over how we can restructure that relationship. You can choose how you want something to be physically embodied. Which actually really reminds me of a thing that I keep getting ads for — the Playtronica Playtron. You can choose to embody an instrument in literally any way you’d like!
Stanford Laptop Orchestra
Wow! I had been curious about the Stanford Laptop Orchestra for a while, and honestly can’t say why I never decided to join. I think I was concerned it might have actually required me to play an instrument… and I now see that does not appear to be the case. I really enjoyed watching some of the performances on YouTube while reading through this bit :) the themes in “Twilight” feel very cyberpunk / SymSys canon to me (in a good way).
I think that the way the speakers are embodied is an excellent example of an attempt to ground something digital as something physical. I loved the way this segued into the final principle of the chapter — “Interfaces should extend us.” The use of physical sensors (like that glove string thing) made me feel like the instrument was literally an extension of every individual.