Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime

What makes a design artful? The realm of design expands from fine arts to technological innovations, from concrete objects to abstract ideas, and this question about the artfulness of design thus not only relates to the aesthetics, but also to a wide range of topics such as ethics and moral philosophy. What are some of the issues we should keep in mind when designing a tech product? How does art relate to and influence the evolution of technology? How do we want to live with the tech innovations and public policies that we designed?

In this episode co-hosted by Tiger and Arjun Mani (Princeton Class of 2021, computer science major with a strong passion for Indian classical music and AI research), Prof. Ge Wang from Stanford will discuss those issues and present his unique vision for the future of our tech and society.

Prof. Ge Wang is an Associate Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He specializes in the art of computer music design — researching programming languages and interactive software design for music, interaction design, expressive mobile music, new performance ensembles (laptop orchestra and mobile phone orchestra), human-computer interaction, visualization (sndpeek), music game design, aesthetics of technology-mediated design, and methodologies for education at the intersection of art, engineering, and design.

Ge is the author and chief architect of the ChucK music programming language, and the founding director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), and co-founder director of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Ge is also the Co-founder of Smule, a startup company exploring music-making via mobile devices (reaching over 200 million users). Ge is the designer of Ocarina, and Magic Piano for the iPhone and iPad. These expressive musical things (are they toys? instruments?) enable people to play and share music with one another around the world. Overall, Ge aims to explore the art of design with technology for music.

Ge is recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship; he is the author of "Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime" (a MusiComic Manifesto) — published by Stanford University Press.

Tiger GaoAugust 4, 2019