Week 3: Strange Loops and Audiovisual Design
My wood sculptor friend, Vince, once showed me his piece, “a peach pit carved into a peach pit”. After reading this strange design loops chapter I think I slightly better understand his fascination with this meta concept inspired by Plato’s ideal world of forms. The ideal form of a peach pit is the symmetric pit which holds the balanced, maximal amount of flesh. So, the shape of an ideal peach pit is the perfect shape to carve into a peach pit. Peaches are also one of the simplest compositions of flesh ensphering bone. By carving the peach pits’ own form onto itself, one can ponder the way the shape of the fruit forms the shape of the pit and/or the pit forms the shape of the fruit in a perfect loop of tension between the formation of flesh and bone in tandem. The simple example a peach provides can expand to ideals of how the shape of our skeleton forms the shape of our muscles, and how ideally developed muscles pull on bones to perfect their density and form. The function of the peach pit carved into a peach pit, a piece of art intended to make you think about form, is determined by the form, the peach pit itself and its present imperfections.
I am often petrified by the sea of possibilities when I think of art and design. Equipped with the principles from this chapter, like simplicity and intentionality, I am excited to start iterating on my audio visualizer to imbue a sense of calm, and breath. I plan to start with the bare minimum on-screen necessary to convey the idea of meditative attention to one’s sur-sound-ings. Simple shapes and calm colors should produce this effect. The narrative will begin with a chime to focus attention on the software, and hopefully encourage steady breath into the microphone through an ideal form inherent to the design of the visualizer. It should also provide something beautiful when there is absolute stillness and silence, to savor the visual of both audio and the lack of audio. The interactive element, creating the form of the visualizer through live audio, should determine the function of producing a meditative visual soundscape. Hopefully, when iterating on this design, a more profound narrative like that in the Converge photo album can emerge. Maybe another peaceful chime after an explosion of the visualizer - Converge inspired - as we return to the chaos of everyday life and remember to find peace amidst that chaos. Upon second thought, I am working on gaudy a smiley face, which also will exemplify simplicity and hopefully produce some feelings of unease, anthropomorphizing the soundwave into a jagged smile. Maybe there is some way to reconcile these two ideas into a juxtaposing, offputting meditatative demo video.
I really appreciate the reminder that humans, like any “useless” and beautiful design, have no preordained purpose, and in their ideal forms, are free to play and exist as ends-in-themselves :)