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https://first-latency-df1.notion.site/Nothing-to-Something-Activity-9a519bdfef4246ea941144a4cb13635a

Hey!!

Back again!

Just finished up my second meeting with Sarah today and had a blast! I gained a lot of information and new possible ways to present my thesis which I’m excited about. I have clear vision of what I want to execute in the short amount of time given so I’m just super excited to dive in!

My next steps for myself involve interviewing, gathering sound, illustrating, and exploring!

Until next time! 🙂

Had a great call with Sarah the other day. Feeling like I should stick with the ML-Interface for music creation, and trying to blend a bit of what I’m doing with what’s going on at work. Some insight from today’s group and 1:1 calls:

• How do you make the interaction still feel rewarding to beginners and experts? Many ML-based music projects have strong guardrails to prevent “bad output”. Can you allow room for the good and bad outputs of your system and still make the experience feel rewarding?
• How can you combine both concepts (Sublime/Awesome Technology + ML Musical Expression) into a single trail of work? Is there room to blend the two ideas?
• Go to the MoMA and check out Refik Anadol’s piece, then read the critique here

Overall I’m feeling good where I’m at, with the next steps being to start reading materials, reviewing my concept with Luisa and asking for course materials, speaking with Yotam, and doing an initial dive into the technologies I want to use.

Great conversation with Brian and Lane 🙂 really helpful

I shared my thesis idea with Brian and he provided feedback and possible next steps on how to narrow down the scope and connect those sub-topics together.

We also went over the proposal guidelines and now I have a clearer understanding on what to do.

It was also inspiring to hear Lane’s idea, she is quite ahead and already started the making process.

The last exercise we did was “5 minimum and 5 maximum specs for my project to get there”, which is useful to determine the priorities & direction.

This peer meeting is a great one. We briefly updated our progress. Brian pointed out several crucial steps to kick off the proposal process, during which we also found helpful to broadened the spectrum of our thesis idea. We each wrote 5 minimum steps to achieve our goal, and maximum 5 steps to achieve the goal, in the end for me especially, I found out that I had focused on the “tech” side way too much and forgot about the fact that sound is also a focal point of my thesis that I yet to discuss. And that opens up the priority for which the device should be built. And I am going to list this in my proposal and discuss the details in depth.

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/Mood-Board-00156a452f5c4f4cbd405e7a30df3c0a

I missed the official first group session last week, so will be making up for another one next week.

This group session was really helpful to me, a lot of useful feedback from Ai, Chelsea, Jheanell, and Beth.

I discussed my crisis in finding a focusing point to dive in for a thesis, and started with talking about the previous project on Swastika symbol. During my presentation of the previous poll project this time around, I realized I got a little better in presenting the project, and really telling what the project is about, without intended to misdirect audiences. I have a tendency to misdirect people in reading my work in the past, it’s unclear to me why and when it became a habit, but I have to constantly reminded myself to stay sincere and honest when I present. I’d say I did a decent job this time around.

Some feedbacks I got is that they appreciate how my works invite difficult conversations into the room, topics like this can easily gone wrong, be careful of creating  “dog whistling” unintentionally. The humanity and acknowledgement of ignorant are also what’s appreciated in my previous works. As for participants, it’s also fun to learn about the different reactions based on the same project.

Another interesting point is how I describe things, the amount of self-analysis and criticism in front of the audience is almost a project idea itself. Can maybe look into that. We also got into some discussion on the confederate flag usage in the south as an example of how symbols mean very different things for different people.

Post to reply to Rothberg’s 2/14/23 email about finding inspiration.

I often jump to parallel or adjacent mediums for a new perspective. For example, I often make music. So I might go to a gallery of paintings and see a Rothko and wonder “what would this visual image sound like?” or go into nature and see droplets flying off of a waterfall and wonder “if those were notes in a song, what would the composition be like?” or in a science context, looking at DNA protein and think of “what sound would a muscle building protein make as opposed to a cerebral / brain protein?”

Switching mediums myself also helps my ideas stay fresh. If I feel burned out on making music, I can make some drawings or small paintings (doesn’t matter if I’m good at it, just draw anything like a daily practice, get ideas out, get used to a new way of expressing ideas, even if its scribbles). Also switching tools helps me. If I’m always making beats with a drum machine, what would it be like to make a beat with just synthesizer sounds instead? Or just using field recording samples?

Another key elements is restriction. It’s one of the best ways to get my mind to think more creatively. Imagine the task of “make a painting” and it may be hard to choose a subject or style. But what about “make a painting with one color” then I really start to be creative. Let’s say I choose red. Is it all the same red? Do I cheat and add a little black or white paint to get different tones of red? Do I cover the canvas all with red, or just make a red shape? Suddenly I have way more ideas than if my palette is unlimited. Same with music: make a composition, vs make a composition with one instrument, or one drum sound. It pushes me into a place where I need to be creative with my problem solving.

Another great meeting with Sarah. I feel like I had a lot of discombobulated thoughts in my head and she was able to help me straighten them out a bit. She gave me the courage to start creating a framework for iteration, then actually doing it in terms of the game that I want to make. And in that process, I could find the “thing” that I’m looking for or resonates.

She also helped verbalize this feeling I had of “is creating the art for it’s own sake, or making that feeling of connection enough?” The past week I’ve been struggling to imagine what the setting would be for my game because I wasn’t really sure if there was a deeper meaning I was explicitly trying to express alongside with thinking of innovative ways to use video games and networks within them to create an emotion.

My next steps are to think more about this framework and some more janky games, which was a struggle for me before. I also want to continue looking into Jane McGonigal’s work, check out the materials for empathy in games Sarah sent me, and schedule a time to speak with Margaret!

Fun session with Beth and co today. They suggested some games with really simple mechanics such as Universal Paperclip and this one about catip: [https://kittensgame.com/web/](https://kittensgame.com/web/)

This made me think about the simplicity of gameplay – games like QWOP and Getting Over It introduce difficulty not through multiple controls but the level of difficulty in those controls. Or just thinking where the difficulty may lie:

– is it a matter of practicing it over and over again? like getting over it?
– is it a matter of having to collaborate with others? a bit of pico park (synchronously) and death stranding (asynchronously)

Also loved listening & talking to Chelsea, Jheanell, Sehmon and Jaye about their projects – got a lot of insight into their thought process and how they’re doing right now!