The Empathetic Dictatorship of Art

I screamed “Eureka!” watching Sarah Dranser’s Design For Developers course. Her stance on being involved in different things stirred in my mind the conviction that I am doing something right by not limiting my scope to a narrow field.

“There’s no semblance that being good at one thing keeps you from being good at another. I see developers bragging about how bad they are at design because they think it means they’re better developers. It doesn’t. It just means they’re bad at design. The more you use your brain in different types of ways, the stronger it becomes.”

I just got validated! Eureka!!!!

How is art a dictator with empathy?

The most captivating paintings employ a system that keeps your eyes revolving around the canvas — Triad Composition.

Key elements are placed in points which when linked together form a triangle. Your eyes keep traveling point to point, following straight paths. You’re stuck, absorb by the beauty, and perhaps weirdness. Left in a mesmeric loop, you deign no compliance to taking your eyes off.

The build up session in Electronic Dance Music creates tension by removing certain elements in the composition, employing impacts (serve as risers) that slowly increase in pitch and volume to fill up the void, keeping you anticipating the drop session where the bass slaps you in the face and everyone on the dance floor gets on the groove. We’re sheep, the sound is the shepherd. The sound is forged in a realm where things are driven by empathy: A realm where the understanding of human behavior (replication of the composer’s current mood) is a priority, which with subtlety dictates  to the listener what to feel, evoking emotions. The sounds tells you to move your body some type of way and you without question embrace the sway.

Succumbing to the sway

The various elements of music employed in varying ways dictates what emotion or paroxysm of emotions a composition evokes with respect to the listeners mood. Sometimes, this is not usually the case, as a composition can override a listeners current mood and completely lift his spirit to a place that has been predetermined by the composer.

Rhythms do not walk up to you and ask you to twerk, (well except Nicki Minaj states it explicitly on a track). But they engineer the thought process, and depending on who’s listening and where the listening is being made, twerking, nodding of head, jumping, rolling on the floor commences.

Oh!! How the hell did sex playlists become a thing?