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Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

#171
post #55

I studied a BFA in Sound Design. It was an incredible mix. Along with the base arts courses, it stepped across music, film, animation and comp sci. It taught me the basics of signal processing, encouraged 'play' and seemed to balance creative expression with the engineering skills to enable that to happen. After getting through all the courses that interested me I dropped out to travel and then fell into a few intere…

This sounds super interesting to me! I watched the video and it led me to install Sonic Pi and start messing around. Very cool stuff, will be interesting to see where electronic music goes in the future. As someone who is still an EE student but is super into music production and film in my spare time, can I ask how you ended up where you are and to what degree your creative background helps out?

Oh sure, sorry for the late reply — been a busy few days.

I spent a large chunk of my life (both pre and post study) working in the live events world. Super fun, but not exactly what I'd call a sustainable lifestyle (financially and health wise). I'd also been coding from from a relatively young age. When I discovered I could combine the two, build things that lasted more than a couple of hours / for a single tour and not be killing myself in the process, I switched focus to the installed AV space. I managed to get lucky with a few positions where I was able to work with some great people who helped me continue learn and have fun.

As others have commented here, I find there's a huge mental overlap between most creative practices and building good software and product. Being able to burst through stages of intense idea creation then follow up and with the ruthless self and external critique required to discard 95% of what you thought were earth changing concepts is a painful, but extremely useful skill to acquire.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

#172
BAS in sound arts. I taught myself JavaScript in parallel with the Web Audio API and wrote the beginner book I wish I had. It's titled "JavaScript for Sound Artists". There are literally no books on the market to teach JavaScript to this demographic so I guess I have the monopoly. I tried (hopefully successfully) to write it in a manner that extends the experience of programming a synth or drum machine to the world of JS. Its on Amazon if anyone is interested. Keep in mind it's a beginner programming book.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

#173
Not an art degree as such - but my degree was Chemical Engineering & European Studies. This allowed me to study german to 3rd year level at uni, Scottish uni's being a 4 year course. Also meant I worked in Germany for 3 summers

I liked the balance the degree gave me - a clean break from both subjects. shame i dont get to practice german now, and shame we're leaving the EU

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

#174
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a master of music once, he did mainly math and algorithms at his current job. He said, he didn't think this would go hand in hand, but after he saw some algorithm stuff from a friend he was surprised how easy it was, so he switched from composing to coding algos.

There's a very strong relationship between music and math as skills, for some reason. It's been commented on and studied in quite a few places. I have no idea why the relationship is so strong, but it is!

Yes, I've heard and read about that a few times, too.

Good pattern recognition skills (as in the general meaning of the word 'patterns', not necessarily design patterns), may be part of the reason, since patterns occur in both code and math.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?

#175
I have an Art & Design degree with a graphic design concentration, and nowadays I'm a designer/developer/entrepreneur/bit of everything.

I wrote a post quite a bit ago about my process learning how to code: https://limedaring.com/articles/im-a-designer-who-learned-dj...

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