There’s a lot in today’s reading that I feel resonate with, but also some that I don’t completely agree. Right in front of our NYU Berlin building, there’s a photo taking machine, and there’s a quote on it: The first 10000 pictures are your worst picture (something like this, can’t recall the exact words). This is exactly what this text emphasizes. Art never comes from emptiness. One has to keep trying, although making bad arts, but this imperfection is irrelevant. I feel so resonate with the part on how perfection drags us behind. I have the mentality of perfectionism, and this mentality affects almost every aspect of my life. Even in playing games, if I have like 100% winning rate in some games or characters, I would gradually stop playing so that this 100% rate would stay forever. Such procrasination stems not only from the mentality of perfectionism, but also a fear of losing. Therefore, this is the part I need to work on improving.
‘However, I don’t really agree with the talent part. At least for the areas that I’m working on, I feel like hard working determines the lower bound while talent determines the upper. This is because, I suppose, when entering a new domain, things are easy at the beginning but are getting harder and requires more talents. Like for my major, mathematics, I have met some really sharp people in some advanced elective course who could devise nuanced proofs that I would never thought about. Nevertheless, I had some of them as classmates in my MVC class, where things are not really hard, and I thought we were sort of at the same level. I wouldn’t attribute all our differences to talents, but I believe it indeed plays some roles.
Regarding the visit, I really enjoyed our trip. Visiting the studio gives a totally different experience from having guest speakers. They cleverly make use of the developing AI technology, instead of getting negatively impacted by it, like many other people in the creative industry do. Not only am I interested in their work, I also find their vibe of having close friends together in one studio be desirable. Overall, it was an awesome trip.