I don't have a degree, but I was a graphic designer before I taught myself programming ~4 years ago. Don't do much design nowadays though, unless it's for a side project.
Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
111–120 of 175 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#112I recently got a BFA in Furniture Design and am currently taking classes to get into a software engineering role.
While some learned coding to produce instructions for milling machines, I did not really do this during my program.
The biggest hard skill that is transferable for me is in the making of presentation artifacts. I am better at documenting, commenting, and organizing my project structure because of the training I've had in explaining the design decisions behind my work.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#113I have a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from an elite university and currently help technology companies market products / bring products to market. Backstory: I've been tinkering with computers and coding since I was about 13, so tech wasn't something I stumbled on post-uni either. Uni taught me how to concisely think through, package and present ideas to people; and to be able to pick apart unfamiliar c…
which....doesnt have much to do with an arts degree?
Story poster didn't specify fine arts even if most of us implied that. BA has art in there, even if it is meant as a liberal arts degree; the story is also attracting design degrees, which technically aren't fine arts either (at least in an art school).
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#114I have an MFA in poetry (2010) and now am a founder/swe at a startup providing software for libraries, museums, and archives. I wouldn't have been able to found a successful company without my time during the MFA where I learned how to live a disciplined life dedicated to exploring the self and imagination and pursuing one's ideas relentlessly.
Also, reflecting further, more than anything, the sheer amount of reading that I was able to do during my MFA taught me more than I think I give that time credit for. Days I was forced to do nothing but read/translate ~12-14 hours to get through coursework. Greek pastoral poetry and the Augustan-era Roman derivative have been influential.
Informative and encouraging to read all the responses in this thread. Thanks, iansowinski and all!
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#115Richard P Gabriel (http://dreamsongs.com) is quite famous in the PL community as the computer scientist with an MFA (in poetry I think). His recent work on computational poetry is quite cool. Not exactly IT, but CS research.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#116I didn't go to art school, but since my first invention was a new medium with new modes of expression that no one else understood like I did, I couldn't help myself making art with it despite my PhD being in physics. I had several solo gallery shows in New York City, pieces in museums and shown across the U.S. and some internationally, a couple big public pieces in Manhattan, and I taught a couple classes in art/desi…
Im am interested in that acting school approach. What makes it different or do you just pick someone from the audience and let them do exercises?
If you don't mind the page being under construction and designed for promotion, the approach is described here: http://spodekacademy.com/about-our-courses.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#117I have an MFA in poetry (2010) and now am a founder/swe at a startup providing software for libraries, museums, and archives. I wouldn't have been able to found a successful company without my time during the MFA where I learned how to live a disciplined life dedicated to exploring the self and imagination and pursuing one's ideas relentlessly. Also, reflecting further, more than anything, the sheer amount of reading…
What is the name of your company?
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#118I started in music, section lead and then later concertmaster in some local orchestras and symphonies, nothing big. But I learned a ton about how to manage people, synchronize work, meet deadlines at high quality and pull together different skillsets to achieve goals. I also learned how to take highly complex subjects and atomize them, learn them from the bottom up and then put them back together. I was pretty sure I'd end up with an art degree, but I also grew up very poor and we simply never had the money.
As a hobby I also participated in the demoscene and saw how very advanced technical approaches and art intersected and found a deep interest in software and technology.
Mix and stir over a couple years, add some time in school studying computer science and management and bada bing bada boom.
I learned to have an opinion, to spot quality, how to make compromises, how to make short term goals that achieved long term goals, how to lead, how to manage and so on. All these skills have served me well and I happily work alongside people with very intense and deep technical backgrounds.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#119Don't have an art degree but self taught since I was a child. I ended working for animation movies: http://feiss.be The funny part is that I have a computer engineering degree though..
I have to ask this: When you watch the spanish "Capture the Flag" trailer (2014) on the website it seems to be based on a different story than the actual movie and trailer released in 2015. It's basically the same two kids and the grandpa flying to the moon. But in the movie they sneak into the rocket (at night). In the 2014 trailer it's actually daylight and it looks like they ended up there by accident (the bike).…
I don't know what happened really, but normally to get financial partners and raise the large amount of money needed for doing an animated movie you prepare a kind of trailer or short clips to show and convince them, usually way before the script is finished, and probably not for the general public. I guess that in this case that "trailer" was good enough for showing as a first public teaser trailer, even if it was not entirely faithful to the final script.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#120Studio art major here. I was a full-time oil painter for five years. My art created the economic conditions for me to need to find actual work, just in time to miss the original dot-com bubble.