Nujabes - The Godfather of Lo-Fi Hip-Hop

 

The Bear

 The red group's feature (short) film entitled The Bear

Microplastics

Here is a video we made in class about the prevalence of microplastics.

 

Eric Yuan’s Capitalization on Covid: Creator of Zoom

    Jennifer Doudna and Emmenuelle Charpentier received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 virtually. They missed out on the annual Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ ceremony at Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden. There, the king of Sweden would have given them their awards personally along with a handshake. But COVID-19 necessitated the switch to an online webconferencer. 

The webconferencer of the pandemic was Zoom. Eric Yuan founded the company in 2011 after he was rejected when pitching it to his former employer, WebEx. He left his role with 40 coworkers to pursue the idea he’d had since his 20s when he was dating his eventual wife who lived 10 hours away, wishing for a way to see her face instantly. Zoom had some big moves early on, including Stanford University as its first official customer and securing partnerships with Slack, Salesforce, and Meta technologies by 2017. But it saw exponential growth during COVID-19, being the 5th most downloaded app in 2020. This landed Yuan in a place of extreme potential. His leadership is what led to Zoom’s success and connected millions of people during lockdowns. He was Time Magazine’s business person of the year. 

Eric Yuan on Zoom 

As Zoom became more popular, it faced security and privacy criticism, including selling data to companies like Meta. This led to millions in settling fees. Yuan had to effectively manage the situation while creatively navigating the press. He released an official blog post reporting on Zoom’s work to resolve issues and the 100+ changes they made to improve security, including hiring third parties to test their software for privacy leaks. This gained him much trust and acclaim from critics. 

When employees started returning to the office, founder and exec Eric Yuan had to get creative. First, they had to stay afloat. They had to let go of 15% of their workforce in 2023, about 1,300 employees. In 2024, it rebranded from “Zoom Video” to “Zoom Communications Inc.,” to shift emphasis from video conferencing to all-around communication and an “AI-first work platform.” Yuan continues to look for new ways to adjust to the current climate and keep his company thriving. 

Paleo Art & The Roots of Human Creativity

Chapter 10 of Agustin Fuentes' The Creative Spark recounts the author's experience in a cave in Portugal, seeing cave paintings illuminated by a dim light, where he realizes in viewing the cave paintings, he's probably standing right where the artist who made them hundreds of years ago would have. As an anthropology major, I love early art like this. Humans have been "behaviorally modern" since about 100,000 years ago, meaning around that time we began to act and think the same way we do now. Right around then is when art began, with ochre paintings on cave walls and carved figurines. This is something I really love about people, is that basically as long as we've been people, we've been making art. Early humans I think are rarely given enough credit-- many people still have the view of ancient man as being a lumbering, primitive caveman, when in reality, ancient people were just like us. They drew pictures and spent time with their families and survived in an altogether pretty hostile world.

Cave paintings like those at Lascax and Altamira are proof of just how like us early humans were, with detailed drawings done from observation and scenes of people and animals. Just like now, people wanted to document their world, to illustrate their lives and stories. I especially love drawings done of horses, as ancient horses really do have that coloration of burnt red on top, white belly, and a black mane, as can be seen in Prezwalski's horse, the most ancient lineage of horses still extant today. I would love to have the experience Fuentes' had, of standing in a dimly lit cave and imagining what it would have been like to be the artist who painted these scenes.

  

 

 

Andy Warhol: A Life Catalogued

    Cataloguing a Life

    Andy Warhol, one of the most impactful artists to lead the pop art movement, has catalogued his life in much the same way Nick Cave does in Faith, Hope and Carnage, albeit over a longer period of time.

    Although Warhol has been cited to perform artwork under more solitary conditions, in contrast to Cave's explicit desire to work alongside others and develop ideas in tandem, Warhol depicts the struggles he had faced in a manner highly similar to Cave's candid discussions of his grief, fears, and anxieties. A gay man and asexual, Warhol lived prior to the gay liberation movement and was unable to produce art which outwardly connected to his sexuality -- many critics and institutions rejected his pieces which focused on erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Despite this, Warhol continued to create such art: this baseless criticism from others held no weight, stating that he "decided [he] just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that [he] didn't want to change anyway, that [he] didn't think [he] 'should' want to change ... Other people could change their attitudes but not [him]."

    Similar to Cave, Warhol's artwork was also influenced by his faith. A Ruthenian Catholic, he described himself as a religious person and attended mass every Sunday. His later works focused heavily on religious themes, some going so far as to cause the Guggenheim to declare the work "obsessed" with faith -- in particular, the Last Supper. 

    Warhol's artwork catalogued every aspect of his life, via as many mediums as possible. From sculpture and fashion, to television and performance art, Andy Warhol cemented himself in the world of art despite the prejudice he faced at the time, and the candidness he displayed via his pieces.

Stromae: Experimentation and Breaking Boundaries

A creative that has gained traction once again in recent years is Stromae. He initially exploded onto the scene in 2009, releasing 3 albums since. In recent years, Stromae has been asked to explain his creative process and inspirations, along with the meaning behind many of his famous songs and music videos.  

He described his multicultural background and his experiences traveling when he was younger as influential. His mother often took the family abroad, and he was exposed to many different cultures as a result, which manifested a desire “to mix everything, to have the feeling that you travel but you never know where you are exactly” (Simon and Craig). This desire to break boundaries and embrace experimentation is discussed by Rubin multiple times throughout his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. He particularly emphasizes that people “like to fit in” and that we evolve to “the boundaries and templates of the culture around us” (Rubin). Even in instances where a specific aesthetic or style is being imitated, it can, as Rubin puts it, turn into “legitimate innovation” (Rubin). Stromae experiments heavily with different musical styles and instruments and mentions that he works with a charango player from Bolivia, experiments with some Asian instruments, and is inspired by his African roots (Simon and Craig). Rubin particularly emphasizes the need for the artist to be open to the world around them, emphasizing that the artist is a conduit, namely that the world comes through us (Rubin).  

Rubin also discusses the existence of creativity in between chaos and discipline (Rubin). Stromae embodies this perfectly. His most recent album was considered experimental, including many influences and genres, however, when asked about his music, he had this to say: “I don't see my music as experimental, I think I'm always trying to do pop music. Mixing my music with traditional music, that was the goal with this album. But I don't think it's experimental, I'm not a big fan of experimental music. I'm the kind of artist that loves when a lot of people like [their music]. But, of course, I try to push boundaries” (PAPER Magazine). Stromae’s mindset towards creation is exactly what Rubin emphasizes as important in his book. He still desires to push boundaries, and remains open to the world around him, but he also has a disciplined mindset when breaking these boundaries. His pop sensibilities are an example of this discipline, whereas his openness to the world around him is an example of his embracement of chaos.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources: 

1. PAPER Magazine. “Stromae’s Global Pop World.” PAPER, 7 Mar. 2022, https://www.papermag.com/stromae-multitude-cover. 

2. Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Penguin Press, 2023. 

3. Simon, Scott, and Andrew Craig. “Stromae: The Belgian Star Who’s Blending Beats and Cultures.” NPR, 5 Mar. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/03/05/1084495207/stromae-the-belgian-star-whos-blending-beats-and-cultures.