Chapter 5 reminded me of why I was drawn to computer music, even though I have zero musical background. Within minutes of trying to make computer music, like playing with a musical toy, I felt joy in the simple noises and loops I was producing and could see the potential to express myself musically without years of formal training or education. I would love to make an embodied instrument that senses the ways I like to dance to music and maps this to create accompanying sounds.
My favorite instrument to play is the belly dancing skirt; it lets you play music with your hips, the center of your being, and where I feel myself responding to music most instinctually. I’d like to modify the idea of a musical skirt, to create some sort of accelerometer mapping to vibrato on the hips, along with a handheld devise with similar mappings to the mug, for more precise sound controls. The co-design of dancing to music and music creation is a really exciting connection, where the form of dance/the dancer’s natural movements could inform the function of the instrument you create.
A dancer’s typical movements inform the input, the type of music they like to dance to would determine the desired accompanying output, and the mapping would take iteration to find what produces pleasant music with natural movement. Along with natural movement, there could be room for finding added flow and improving at this instrument in a more advanced-mode, by introducing some learned parameters for a handheld controller. This controller could control the overall synthesis of the model, possibly adding delay, or rate of decay to the system. The belt would be an example of PHISEM “physically inspired stochastic event modeling” a particle system to emulate a tamborine-like instrument most likely. This book introduces so many novel concepts and examples of creative endeavors. I’m sometimes pretty jealous that some people are inclined to express themselves in these expansive, artistic ways. I just like to dance in strange yoga ways, which I’ve heard makes other people jealous at the joy I get from movement, but it’s such an ephemeral form of art. I appreciate the time I spend making things that last, but can’t seem to do that if there’s no assignment/deadline the way I can spontaneously burst into acrobatics when left with free time.
Chapter 6: Play
An occasion of pure waste, but an essential element of human flourishing brings to mind burning man. People will criticize this gathering as an extreme waste of resources and time, but it’s an exemplar of play, and many people find this event to be at the center of their being, something to live for, and the only place they feel truly free. I haven’t been myself but most of my close friends are burners, and I’m in awe of the ingenuity that goes into every aspect of the event, even people’s RVs are works of art. This is one of them I saw at Dirtybird Campout this year, a giant willow tree with a twisty tube slide to take you down from the ship deck on top.
I see the lines between work and play as seriously blurred since learning to play piano for fun is definitely a form of play that is deliberate, has clear benefits to your cognitive abilities, yet is primarily for fun in the present, a chance for improvisation and expression or learning your favorite songs.
I wonder if my fascination with yoga can be understood through the aesthetics of games. It’s a challenge, developing new physical skills, sensation as you direct mindful attention to different parts of your body, a form of self-expression when adding your own flare to flows, the discovery of your capabilities and emotions as they come up, fellowship practicing in union with a whole class, submission to the practice and reflection during a final savasana.
I’m grateful for this class, helping me to find play in coding, something I’ve done for years now but never really enjoyed aside from the satisfaction/relief I get turning in Psets. Blurring the lines between work and play allows people to engage in play and enjoy themselves and also receive the benefits of work, and feel good about that too! I needed the structure of this course to get me to play in ways that don’t come naturally to me. My form of play has almost always happened naturally for me in the physical realm, since I was a little kid I wanted to climb everything, play every sport, and would never sit still unless it was required of me for class/homework. Sometimes we obtain freedoms through restrictions and discovering new aspects of ourselves and the ways we can engage in play that we might not have brought forth if left to our own devices.
This class is like one big game really. There’s a balance between work and the reward of finishing projects / presenting them so that the right parameters for finding flow are present. We have a goal to create some projects, but the expressive freedom to do virtually any project we like. Therefore, not only are we trying to create games with flow, we can find flow in the design of these games when working in a structured, social setting like our classroom.