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Response to Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

In a rather ironic setting at a Stanford Commencement, Steve Jobs spends some time recalling some of the ways that dropping out of college has led to the greatest opportunities and revelations in his life. He talks about three stories in particular, each in secession having to do with “connecting the dots”, “dealing with love and loss”, and “confronting death”. In his first story of connecting the dots, Steve Jobs talks about how him dropping out of college led him to create the legacy he known for at Apple. It allowed him to attend a calligraphy class that if he otherwise would not have attended would have impacted the creative design that Macs output today. All of the choices he made in his life was done out of a gut feeling; a hunger to want to do something, which is something that he emphasizes to the crowd. In retrospect, it is impossible to see how the dots connected in his life in realtime, but it is so obvious when looking back. He emphasizes to tackle this by doing the things that you love, and to not live a life the someone else lives.

Steve Jobs relates with first story with two others talking about love, loss, and death. He explains how death is one of the greatest inventions of life. If you live everyday like it is your last, and you determine that you would not be satisfied with your life outcome, then it is a dead giveaway to make a change in your life. To live your life to the fullest is to do what you love, and to excel greatly in that field. To have an ambition or hunger to do something is one of the greatest things you can do; the ceiling for accomplishment really is limitless. For the matters of my own project, Steve Jobs was a pioneer in 3-D animation, creating Pixar Animation Studios shortly after being fired from Apple. He is an inspiration for all trying to join the field, and I would like to emulate that part of his story.

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Steve Jobs

The speech Steve Jobs did was very eye opening to me. The first story Jobs talked about I could relate to. Jobs talked about his thought process on dropping out of college. Which is parallel to my dad’s ideals of college. Just like Jobs, my dad dropped out of college because he did not see the worth in it. Both Jobs and my dad knew that they wanted to do what they feel passionate about. Surprisingly, both passions were in their own businesses’.

Jobs later talks about the fact that dots in your life later connect. I have always loved this thought process. To me, things happen for a reason and that reason is shown later in life. For Steve Jobs, being fired from Apple was the kick off to his creativity. Big events, even the devastating ones, kick me into gear. Given, the first moments of the devastating events I cannot pull myself together. However, just like Steve Jobs said, the dots connect later in life. I can think of many events in my life that has kicked me into something even better.

The last story Jobs talked about inspired me the most. The thought of death has always been something I have struggled to think about. Thinking about death spirals me into almost a life crisis. However, Steve Jobs words the ideal of death perfectly. We should not fear death but use it as an influencer. The way Jobs said to not waste your life living someone else’s really got to me. Society is about fitting in or else you are seen as “weird”. In many ways, this way of thinking is starting to go away. Yet, this pressure to fit in still lingers. Jobs got me thinking, I really should try to live my own life. As well as not get too caught up in what other people think. This is detrimental to creativity. Overall, the Steve Jobs speech gave me a lot to think about. Especially with my big life decisions and how I react to them.

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A SAAB Possibility; Apple’s [AR]T

https://www.apple.com/today/feature/augmentedrealities

Creativity’s Outer Limits

Designed by Today at Apple, [AR]T brings together artists and curators, filmmakers and educators, in a collaborative initiative that pushes the creative potential of augmented reality.

We asked Chicago’s Nick Cave to create an immersive AR installation, Amass, that can be experienced in every Apple Store. We also developed a new session with digital artist and teacher Sarah Rothberg that puts AR’s tools to playful use in the hands of beginners.

To provide a glimpse of what’s possible, we partnered with New York’s pioneering New Museum in curating seven artists to craft original AR artworks. They live as a visual layer on the cityscape and are experienced via a walk with an iPhone in six major cities. Their stories follow below.

[AR]T Walk

If there’s a through line in the seven artists that collaborated with the New Museum and Today at Apple to create [AR]T Walk, it’s a shared desire to create not just pieces of art, but entire worlds. Created specifically for this medium, the works — by Nick Cave, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Cao Fei, John Giorno, Carsten Höller, and Pipilotti Rist — are experienced via a walk in Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo.

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Minigame Masters (Feedback Requested)

My thesis project will be a design document of a Mario Party-esque collection of minigames that would be played in VR.

I will be updating my design document at the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JhwvaiGwqwkBxH0IY7rEHbV4f1-gaTnqvjX4YQjqyTA/edit?usp=sharing

Please feel free to check it out and send me any feedback you have.

I especially am looking for feedback on fonts for the logos of the minigames, so please take a look at section 9a and tell me which you think looks best.

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“Stay hungry, stay foolish”

Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 resonated with me more than I believed it would. At this point in my life, I admittedly feel incredibly confused, quite excited but a bit scared as to exactly what I want to do when I graduate from The College of New Jersey. Some of the ideas he discussed hit closer to home than expected – for instance, following curiosity and intuition, whether that be off the well-worn path or not. Finding an avenue that I am interested in enough to pursue it, educate myself and become enveloped in the material is something that quite literally just happened while searching for ideas for senior thesis. I never expected to be teaching myself electronics at the start of senior year – how circuits work, components and their functions, how an Arduino operates and how to manipulate its inputs and outputs – but I absolutely love it and I cannot stop thinking about it. For whatever reason I am undeniably drawn to this aspect of design, I’m thrilled to keep learning and developing the skills involved. 

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, only backwards.“

Steve Jobs’ words on connecting these dots and following one’s passion, maybe literally not knowing where it’ll take you but instinctively pursuing that goal, really helped put things in perspective for me. It isn’t about what I thought I’d do but what I enjoy doing and what work I believe is great work. And regardless of obstacles, as he mentioned, remembering that we all die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking there is something to lose – to own death and its inevitability will give the greatest strength in conquering life. To continue to do what I love, despite it being what I thought I would end up doing or not, is something I will always strive for, in senior thesis, in my career and in my life. 

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Ideas and Life Assessment

So, I think I’m supposed to post this here. I didn’t have any other prompts to post this assignment anywhere else, so I guess I’m good. Anyway, for this post, I have decided to watch Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. Although I knew about his life story, I didn’t realize how him dropping out of college had such an impact on the entire world based on the little things he did. He mentions that he took a calligraphy class, which enlightened his fascination with fonts, allowing him to create an extensive typography of fonts for his first edition of the Mac. By connecting the dots, he realized 10 years down the line when he was creating the computer about how much the class had taught him, which in turn let him distinguish his innovations from others.

This made me realize that I too, have connected the dots to get to where I am now with my thesis idea. Over the years, I did countless hours of speech and occupational therapy, as a person with ADHD and Auditory Processing Delay, mostly involving a game called Interactive Metronome, which uses a bell sound and the clapping of hands together to press a button on the beat. At first, there were times where I was bored of this and didn’t want to do it since it was repetitive. However, over the course of several testings, I learned that it actually helped my cognition, attention span, and processing skills all this time. This made me realize that I wanted to do something that also helps people, including those with mental, visual, auditory, and physical disabilities, yet is also fun and interactive in the form of a video or visual program (I don’t do well with code, though).

As far as the life assessment goes, I relate to what Jobs said about loving what you do to understand how you can live life to the fullest. I recently had an internship where I created videos for an insurance company, and I actually really enjoyed editing them. So much so that I feel it could be something I want to do post-college even. I also love playing video games, such as Jobs loved tinkering with code and microprocessors, so of course, I play them, and analyze them. From what started as a simple hobby that I never grew out of, changed into something that I am heavily considering as a career.

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Senior Thesis: The Big Idea

Last semester I had a talk with John Kuiphoff and he gave me great advice. John told me about one of his friends that does animation. The friend chose one element of animation to focus on in his career. This gave me great inspiration to focus on facial expressions. The part of me that is greatly enraptured with psychology was drawn to the idea of expressions in animation. In this project, I want to dip into the world of facial expression.

My first big idea is to incorporate music into my project. I want to have a close up of a face that reacts to different genres of music. I want to really focus on smoothness and the realness of the facial reaction of music. For the face, I would have the 3D model to be a female in her late teens or early 20’s. I am a bit conflicted on what my time duration would be. I would love to have it on loop. So maybe having 30-50 seconds of animation would be great to present. The music that I will choose will be royalty free. The genres would most likely be: Pop, Emo, Alternative, Country and Screamo. I am hoping that this will be my project. However, I do have an alternative project just in case.

My alternative idea would be to animate a mermaid captured in an aquarium. I would focus on her sad expression through the glass aquarium. However, with this idea, I would animate her swimming around in the glass water filled cage. This could help me work on the smoothness of my animations as well. I would include music in this idea too. However, it would not be the focal point like in my main idea. The music should be more incorporated in the background. I would want the music to be somber in mood, as you see the mermaid locked away for the entertainment of others. This animation I would also love to have on loop. This animation length would be about 45 seconds long.

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Project SYNC

For my senior thesis project, I’m interested in creating a series of motion graphics inspired by music. I’m inspired by graphics that both accompany live musical performances and smaller scale looping graphics that accompany tracks on Spotify Mobile. I’d like to create motion/video graphics that will accompany a song and add more depth and elements of storytelling when paired with the music.

This past summer I interned for a marketing company doing motion graphics and video editing, gaining more experience using After Effects and video editing software. I really enjoyed it, so I’d like to strengthen my motion graphic skills and create some work for myself. I was inspired by the looping motion graphics which accompany many songs on Spotify Mobile, and would love to try my hand at creating my own.

Over the summer I also went to a Billie Eilish Concert where I was captivated by the background visuals which spanned 3 huge screens and the stage itself, and the ways which they accompanied her performance so well. With my thesis I’d love to create a variety of visuals that tell a story when paired with pieces of music.

I’ll likely have to reach out to the artists who’s work I’m interested in using for permission, but I guess it’s all part of the process. I’m hoping to create some looping, formatted for mobile, “spotify-esque” graphics as well as some longer, standard video format graphics that may change throughout a songs entire duration, and possibly even some graphics designed to span a series of screens, perhaps to accompany a live performance.

I’ve always been interested in combining my love of music, performance, visual art and animation, and I feel like this is a great opportunity to do so.

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Senior Thesis – Preliminary Thoughts & Ideas

Senior Thesis was always something I wanted to enter into knowing full-well what I wanted to accomplish. Being someone who has skills in a range of areas – cinematography and video editing, audio recording and production, digital painting and illustration as well as physical design and creation, I have felt overwhelmed in the broadness of options I have to produce a singular final project. 

Should I focus on a skill I’m proficient in?

Or should I reach for something I have no idea how to do?

After many sleepless nights and anxiety-filled brainstorming sessions, I think I’ve come across an idea that has sparked my interest unlike any that have crossed my mind thus far – guitar pedals. While building guitar pedals from scratch is quite a popular hobby, I have never dabbled in the craft or found much interest in them at all despite being an active guitarist for over 11 years.

I keep coming back to an encounter I had recently while buying a homemade guitar pedal (quite legitimately one of the only pedals I’ve ever bought) from a true DIY man, “I never really bought any pedals growing up because none of them had the sounds I wanted, so I just made them myself.“

My jaw dropped, man is he right.

My first goal is to learn how to build a guitar pedal from the bottom up – understanding electronic components and how they work and alter sound, soldering and wiring the printed circuit boards, creating unique enclosures using digital fabrication and branding the product to be my own. 

Once I generally understand the mechanics and intricacies of guitar pedals, I want to push the limits. Although this second phase is still in the pre-production stage, I would like to integrate features that have never been used before with an effects pedal. Whether that means adding proximity sensors that modify the tone depending on how far the player is from the pedal or having the pedal interface with your phone, I want my device to be unique to both the guitar gear world and Interactive Multimedia. 

As this process continues, I can also focus on certain aspects of the build to exemplify my talents. For instance, if I have more difficulty than suspected with the electronics portion of the build, I can focus on creating interesting and exciting enclosures that spark attention to my skills in design and laser engraving. Reversely, I can focus on creating the most distinctive tones and features a guitar pedal can have, utilizing microcontrollers such as Arduino to make the pedal more interactive. 

I am very excited and a bit nervous to see where this goes, but alas, I have an idea and I am going to run with it.