Event 1: Pop Up Lecture Roxanne Harris

-
In this pop-up lecture, I had the chance to learn about Roxanne Harris. She is currently getting her Master of Fine Arts in Design Media Arts at UCLA, and “... holds a B.A. in Computer Science and Music from Yale University (Harris).” Also being interested in computers, I was really excited to attend.


Picture of me attending the lecture!


    After introducing herself, she went on to explain her background and how she had arrived at her current position. She played the saxophone in high school, and her favorite subject was math. She told us that, in short, she codes music. With her computer science background, she creates code that translates to a beat, and the more she adds, the more it turns into music. My favorite part was the fact that she could add visuals to the music. She also performs and does this live sometimes. Even though I have no musical background, I still found this super cool because I’ve never heard of this before. “For as long as we can trace, visual art has always been used to compliment music, serving as a gateway to the listening journey and introducing new expressions and emotions that resonate with the viewer (RLNStudios).”


Harris during live performances. (Harris)


After explaining everything, she showed us her Instagram account, which had some quick videos of some of her work. At the end, she made a quick example beat for us, which I enjoyed. Overall, I learned more about the connection between math and art, and also music and art. It just goes to show that there are endless possibilities for what can come out of art. Afterwards, I was still fascinated by this and decided to do some research on my own. Northwestern University has a beginner's class called Introduction to Digital Music with Python Programming: Learning Music With Code. “ The team wanted to help people of all coding backgrounds and musical ability (including those with none) explore the algorithmic and mathematical beauty of music (Deardorff).” I found it cool that they found a way to make this a class because, from what I can tell, this can be the future of music. I would recommend watching this lecture because the topic is super interesting and it's cool to see the path she took to get where she is.


Zoom confirmation of the lecture.


Works Cited

Deardorff, Julie. “The Future of Music: Making Beats With Code.” SESP Northwestern, 24 May 2022, https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/computer-science/news-events/news/articles/2022/the-future-of-music-making-beats-with-code.htm l. Accessed 25 April 2025.

Harris, Roxanne. “Bio.” alsoknownasrox, https://alsoknownasrox.com/Bio-1 . Accessed 25 April 2025.

RLNStudios. “Connection Between Art and Music.” robertlynnnelson, 13 April 2022, https://robertlynnelson.com/connection-between-art-and-music/ . Accessed 25 April 2025.










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

-
Image
  Aristotle first believed that the seat of human thought and emotion was the heart and that the main purpose of the brain was to cool the blood and thereby prevent the lungs and heart from becoming overheated. We know today that isn't true. The brain is a very complex organ. “... [The Brain] can contemplate the meaning of infinity, and it can contemplate itself contemplating the meaning of infinity (TED Talks). ”  The brain is responsible for your dreams. It’s known that people don't remember 95% of their dreams. This is because to recall a dream, you would have to wake up from REM sleep. “If, instead, you pass into the next stage of sleep without rousing, that dream will never enter long-term memory (Pappas and Bryner).” This stage of sleep occurs about every 90 minutes, but can last anywhere from a few minutes to twenty minutes. (Summer and Singh) (Bertolero and Bassett) The discovery of different technologies, like electricity,  has allowed scientists and researchers...
Read more

Week 1: Two Cultures

-
Image
  My name is Lauren, and I am an applied mathematics major here at UCLA. Something I noticed before this class was about the two types of bachelor's degrees, art and science. I’ve always wondered why it was those two. "A bachelor of arts usually includes broader general instruction in the liberal arts and humanities, whereas a bachelor of science includes more focused, applied work (Leckrone).” I always found it interesting how my math degree falls into the science category when math even has it’s own letter in STEM. (Jung and Tak)      In 1959, C.P. Snow gave a lecture, which talked about how the separation of art and science is creating a knowledge gap. This week in class, we got a chance to learn about the division of these “two cultures.”  At UCLA, for example, the campus is split into North and South campuses, with the north side being social sciences and humanities and the south side being physical and life sciences. “It’s not as though there’s a physi...
Read more

Week 4: Medicine + Technology + Art

-
Image
  The practice of medicine dates back as early as 10,900 BCE. Andreas Vesalius was known as the founder of modern human anatomy. He had groundbreaking work and a new approach, at the time, to studying the human body through dissections and very accurate illustrations. The book Gray’s Anatomy by Henry Gray was a ground-breaking text known for its well-written descriptions and images of human anatomy. Even today, many doctors still refer to this book. (Gray) Technology was incorporated into hospitals in the early 20th century. The first MRI image actually took 5 hours to produce. Now hospitals use all sorts of technology to help patients, inclusing MRI machines and X-rays. First Mri Machine in 1973 (Star Imaging Admin) Technology has played a huge role in the advancement of medicine. Two people have used this to their advantage and turned it into art. “Using an iPad app created by Virgil Wong and Katie McCurdy through their company Medical Avatar LLC, patients track and communica...
Read more