Essays
Essay 1: Discussion of Developement
My biggest hobby growing up was undeniably music. I have been playing drums since I was two years old, and it was always the main characteristic that defined my elementary and adolescent life. I was involved in a number of high school bands, concert bands, theater pit bands, choral instrumentation - you name it, I was involved in some sort of way. However, growing up in the digital age, my interests spanned across a number of different fields. I was always interested in computers and video editing, and had a casual interest in things such as graphic design. I also enjoy writing essays, and other obscure interest such as sound design, and creating visual glitch art. Even things surrounding computers that I wasn’t necessarily passionate about came extremely easy to me. Because of this, I found it especially difficult when picking a major for college.
I was always worried about putting myself in a box with major and degree programs. For most of my life I assumed I would be a drum performance major being that it came the easiest to me, but as time progressed I started feeling claustrophobic by the limitations a strictly drum-oriented career would give me, not to mention the near non-existent financial stability that comes with being a professional musician. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I’m pretty good at playing drums, and the lifestyle of a drummer - professional or casual - will always be there for me if I ever want to pick it up. With that in mind, so long as I have the opportunity to pursue a college education and earn a degree, I may as well put my attention towards building myself into a swiss army knife of technological skills in our media driven world, so long as I have a passion for these subjects as well I take as well.
I decided to pursue New Media in hopes to find a range of courses that would exercise all of my interests and allow me to be creative in ways that excite me. Throughout my year and a half of my major, I have enjoyed all of my assignments in each of my New Media core classes and studio courses, and have tried my best to go above and beyond what I see as well as outdo myself with each studio assignment. In my sound design class, I was inspired by the fast pace and well-executed storytelling of RadioLab, to which I was inspired to create my own utilizing both my reading and narrating skills, but also build upon and assess my sound design skills. In Video Art 1, I was forced to think more critically about my visual work of the past, and utilize my unique visual experiments in a story or concept. Outside of the nine projects I present here on my portfolio, I am always looking for new ways to get involved with campus activities surrounding my major, such as recently helping to create ideas for the PTV program, and numerous PSA video projects at Suffolk County Community College.
Alongside the skills that I have sharpened and expanded upon, I have also discovered a new passion for something I never considered until enrolling at Purchase and trying out for myself, which is web design. As you may have been able to conclude based on this website, I have taken a very large interest in programming and web design, and the unique visual possibilities that can be executed with a list of small yet powerful commands. I believe that it allows me to have a pocket to express all of my skills; it involves design, sound, writing, and visuals all wrapped into one aspect of a large major. Throughout my semester, I have taken a keen interest in web design as a career path, and would love to explore it more as I continue my major into the advanced courses.
With this, I hope that my advanced standing proposal will allow you to see the skills that I have learned throughout my time so far, and I look forward to the skills I will learn in my future courses.
I was always worried about putting myself in a box with major and degree programs. For most of my life I assumed I would be a drum performance major being that it came the easiest to me, but as time progressed I started feeling claustrophobic by the limitations a strictly drum-oriented career would give me, not to mention the near non-existent financial stability that comes with being a professional musician. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I’m pretty good at playing drums, and the lifestyle of a drummer - professional or casual - will always be there for me if I ever want to pick it up. With that in mind, so long as I have the opportunity to pursue a college education and earn a degree, I may as well put my attention towards building myself into a swiss army knife of technological skills in our media driven world, so long as I have a passion for these subjects as well I take as well.
I decided to pursue New Media in hopes to find a range of courses that would exercise all of my interests and allow me to be creative in ways that excite me. Throughout my year and a half of my major, I have enjoyed all of my assignments in each of my New Media core classes and studio courses, and have tried my best to go above and beyond what I see as well as outdo myself with each studio assignment. In my sound design class, I was inspired by the fast pace and well-executed storytelling of RadioLab, to which I was inspired to create my own utilizing both my reading and narrating skills, but also build upon and assess my sound design skills. In Video Art 1, I was forced to think more critically about my visual work of the past, and utilize my unique visual experiments in a story or concept. Outside of the nine projects I present here on my portfolio, I am always looking for new ways to get involved with campus activities surrounding my major, such as recently helping to create ideas for the PTV program, and numerous PSA video projects at Suffolk County Community College.
Alongside the skills that I have sharpened and expanded upon, I have also discovered a new passion for something I never considered until enrolling at Purchase and trying out for myself, which is web design. As you may have been able to conclude based on this website, I have taken a very large interest in programming and web design, and the unique visual possibilities that can be executed with a list of small yet powerful commands. I believe that it allows me to have a pocket to express all of my skills; it involves design, sound, writing, and visuals all wrapped into one aspect of a large major. Throughout my semester, I have taken a keen interest in web design as a career path, and would love to explore it more as I continue my major into the advanced courses.
With this, I hope that my advanced standing proposal will allow you to see the skills that I have learned throughout my time so far, and I look forward to the skills I will learn in my future courses.
Essay 2: Proposal for Academic Study
As illustrated in my first essay, I am probably the most inclined to focus my attention on Web Design. As a career path, it allows me the most enjoyment creatively as well as the most ability to do things artistically. Besides that, I think I also have developed and improved my skills in sound design and video production, of which I would like to expand upon in the future. I also would like to explore some classes that are based around social media, and how to produce content for companies who are in need of modern online content. In the end, even if I cannot attain the positions that are of these specific aspects of the major, I would still find it enjoyable to be part of anything related to music, video, or media in general.
Considering all of this, the electives that intrigue me the most would be NME 3770/Experimental Web Practice, NME 3010/Cross-Cultural Video Production, NME 3040/Internet as Public Art, and NME 3545/Community-Centered Media. I believe it is with these classes that I will find a great combination of the many tools and skills that I would like to continuously improve while I am still here. For my anthropology/sociology course, I am considering MSA 3400/Critical Perspectives on Media Society and the Arts, as I think it will give me excellent insight into the type of environments that I will find myself in. If allowed, I would also like to attend a few studio production courses so that I can refine my production and sound design skills to the point where I can engage with others at a professional level. Not only would it build my sound design skills, but it would also benefit me greatly to have all this information in conjunction with my side career as a working musician.
For my senior project, I’m really interested in creating an auto-generated social media website. I would like it to be in a similar format to Tiktok, except all of the content is AI-generated using random variables. I’m thinking of having a select number of phrases to put together, a song generator made in JavaScript to play in the background, and a visual abstract animation creator made in p5. The idea is that it has such a wide variety of variables to choose from that it makes something entirely new each time you refresh your page. As for internships, I am very intrigued by anything video-based or programming-based. I would love to be part of a video production team of some sort, getting a feeling for what it’s like to be a video editor, social media director, or web designer.
Outside of my classes, I would like to look more into the PTV program at Purchase, as I think that would be a wonderful outlet for many of my ideas. My friend is a member of the program, and we have discussed multiple ideas for new shows and productions to put on. I also think being a part of this program would afford me the opportunity to edit these videos, and gain some experience in real-world social media style editing techniques and production.
Overall, in being granted access to higher-level courses, I look forward to garnering enough skills and abilities so that I may never feel restricted in my career path, and at the end of my degree program I will have the ability to pursue a profession I find enjoyable.