Author: Hubert Chang

Today I learned about the concept of eye portraits. I loved the way Harshini was like “yeah you give one based on your eye to your secret lover, and some parents used to keep one of their kid’s eyes.” 

Here are some of the key takeaways I jotted down in my notes along with my thoughts on them

“Go to Arts Center shows, never let work be an excuse.”

> This was something I really forced myself to do in the first semester last year but I just couldn’t keep it up. I also feel like there’s so much opportunity around me that it’s almost impossible to not miss out occasionally.

“Take more free workshops, don’t take them for granted.”

> I actually really regret not attending more random workshops this past year. There was even a workshop on working as a game designer that I unfortunately couldn’t attend because of other plans I made.

“No one cares about my CV, my degree from NYUAD says enough”

> This one felt extra affirmed by what my design professor, Professor Goffredo, said to me during my final exam interview. He told me that the university needs to hold its students to high regards so that having a degree from NYUAD has a lot of weight.

I realized I had a question I wanted to ask Harshini but I totally spaced out and forgot on the spot, but I remember now. I wanted to get Harshini’s opinion on whether she brings up being neurodivergent to employers. As an art student with ADHD, I’ve been curious on whether other fellow artists bring up the topic at all in a professional setting.

Back home in East Asia, there’s always a stigma against even the smallest disorders. If you were born with an attention disorder then you should be fixed, if you can’t be fixed then you have less value. I wonder how Harshini feels about the topic.

Overall, Harshini was a great guest that gave me plenty of food for thought considering how she was an alumni.

Video games – as often greatly misunderstood and underappreciated by non-gamers, they mean everything to me. In my 19 years on this planet, my fondest life memories might just have been playing games with friends. Games connect people like no other experience. However, despite greatly treasuring multiplayer experiences, I have always categorized them differently from single-player experiences like Elden Ring or Persona 4. These games are meant to be immersive experiences for me to sink into, completely different from the multiplayer games I would use as a means of socializing and bonding. That’s why I never could have imagined the weight that Hazelights Studio’s “It Takes Two” could have on the industry, only proven by their accolades and winning Game of the Year in 2021. “It Takes Two” has the quality and immersion of the best single player franchises, but serves as so much more between you and your partner.

“It Takes Two” is a story that stars a small family of three: the father and husband – Cody, the mother and wife – May, and their precious daughter – Rose. Cody and May have recently decided to file for divorce. This takes a toll on the couple, but especially their daughter, who just wants to see her parents get along again. Her teardrops enchant the dolls and give them life, the minds of Cody and May. “It Takes Two” is a game that requires exactly two people to play the game, no more, no less. You and your partner solve puzzles as Rose’s handmade dolls in order to turn back into real humans again. On this journey, you and your partner slowly uncover the reasons behind Cody and May filing for divorce with every chapter you clear. The gameplay requires you to cooperate, but it also nudges you subconsciously to trust and rely on each other. It all ties back to the name of the game: “It Takes Two.”

Relationships are hard. Anyone who has been in one knows they are, and I’m sure everyone has heard that the number one reason why relationships don’t work out is a lack of communication. “It Takes Two” forces Cody and May to help each other to not necessarily re-ignite their love, but to nudge them into talking about their relationship. Of course this also prompts the couple holding the controllers to think about their own relationship, regardless of whether it’s rough, good, or even amazing. I don’t think this is a game you can truly feel the weight of unless you play it with your partner.

As my girlfriend and I experienced Cody and May’s story, we reflected on ourselves and were inspired to rely on each other more, to give ourselves more “us” time, to apologize for things we never got to, and to ultimately let the other person know they mattered. Maybe playing other games with her is good fun, but witnessing Cody and May’s story really moved us. Their story is one where you can gradually see that they clearly loved each other, but lost the strength they needed to tell themselves that they can make it work. I wish I could do the feelings the game invokes in you justice, but it really is something you have to experience, not read or listen to.

P.S. It’s actually my girlfriend’s 19th birthday as of writing this! So a special shoutout to her. I am forever grateful for her playing games with me.

“…it is a species of fear– the fear that your fate is in your own hands, but that your hands are weak.”

As a designer, illustrator, storywriter, I know this feeling too well. On the surface I see it as frustration, but I know that it’s a type of fear deep inside. It’s not the same fear I feel when I look over a tall ledge, but a fear that even though I know I’m capable of being as good as I want, there’s nothing else that can possibly make me better at any of these things if I don’t consciously learn it. I’m basically alone no matter whose guidance I receive and what tutorials I read and watch. In the grand scheme of things, no one but me can make me a better designer, illustrator, or writer than me. And that really sucks sometimes.

“The sane human being is satisfied that the best he/she can do at any given moment is the best he/she can do at any given moment. That belief, if widely embraced, would make this book unnecessary, false, or both. Such sanity is, unfortunately, rare.:

This quote made a lot of sense when I first read it. I interpreted it as: if someone is comfortable with what they’re able to achieve right now, there would be no need for this book to address those common feelings.” However, now that I’ve read the sentence again, I have no idea if my interpretation was remotely on the spot. If anything, I agree with my interpretation of the author.

“The best you can do is make art you care about – and lots of it!”

I used to practice illustration by trying to make each piece or even doodle as best as I could imagine it. I realize that’s why my growth stagnated greatly and I eventually lost motivation. Now I’m on a “draw literally as many things as you can” and it’s doing me wonders. I can draw a more diverse set of things than ever before, and somehow the quality of the work started rising along with my motivation too

Just from the title alone before I even read the chapter, I was reminded of this very concept I learned as part of my Intro to Entrepreneurship class. During the ideation process, we were taught two very important lessons.

The first lesson was to suspend judgment when members of the group brought up ideas. Even if you didn’t agree with their idea or think it’s garbage, don’t verbalize your disagreement until everyone gets to discuss the ideas.

Another lesson we learned was to think with restrictions. Professor Scheck would give us stick notes with pretty random subjects on them. For example, my team was trying to start a student-run Thrift Pop-Up event. Professor Scheck gave us the theme of “moon”, which you might think had nothing to do with anything, but it actually let us come up with some really unique ideas like theming the pop-up around the moon stages and hosting it on lunar eclipses or full moons so students know when to expect a Thrift Pop-Up during the year.

Even if we didn’t follow through with those unique ideas, it was still a very effective ideation strategy I’ll remember. This is more or less what De Bono is discussing when he explains the difference between “being right” and “being effective.” Being effective just means being right at the end, so there’s no pressure to always be right because that’s not important. In a way I learned about lateral thinking through Professor Scheck echoing the same concepts in Intro to Entrepreneurship without me knowing it as lateral thinking.

One of my favorite takeaways was when De Bono points out the human tendency to borrow units of things from pre-existing concepts like building a mechanical hand with specifically five fingers to pick apples. I can’t remember where I read this but I remember learning that humans have a tendency to assume the human approach is the best approach. After all, we’re at the top of the food chain so surely we must understand everything better than any other animal, right?

Well, I think that’s where modern design leaves a lot of room for biomimicry. This was a really passionate topic for me back when I thought I wanted to be a biologist and engineer in high school, but it’s actually still relevant to me as a designer.

It’s not like animals designed their bodies the way they are of course, but they can serve as a reference for what might be the best solutions to a human problem, like using the shape of a Kingfisher beak and applying it to the nose of the Shinkansen bullet train.

Another takeaway was how to approach obviously wrong ideas. De Bono says the lateral thinking approach would be to shift one’s attention to why the idea is wrong and extract whatever usefulness it has before you move on. My reading of this paragraph is to essentially reverse what you think is obviously wrong and see the opposite idea, which may or may not be an idea to add to the solution.

Entry Point: 

The foundation of a creative idea is always the hardest to come up with.

Reversal #1: 

The foundation of ANY idea is always the hardest to come up with

Reversal #2: 

The foundation of a creative project is the easiest to come up with, building upon the foundation is not.

Reversal #3: 

The foundation of a creative idea should come up naturally.

Reversal #4: 

Only the foundation of a Creating class idea is hard to come up with.

Reversal #5: 

Narrowing down the creative ideas is the hardest part, not coming up with the ideas.

The entry point was literally what I was thinking as I sat blankly at my laptop screen, and I realized that could probably work as my entry point.

I came up with five reversals but I feel like the second idea I came up with, “The foundation of a creative project is the easiest to come up with, building upon the foundation is not”, really resonated with me because I thought of this one flip phone game I would play over a decade ago on my cousin’s phone. I searched it up and I found out it’s called Tower Bloxx. 

Basically you try and build the largest tower you can, but the crane operator is both extremely proficient while being completely drunk on the job.

The challenge is the crane swings the next floor of the building wildly and you have to time when to put it. Obviously putting the foundation of the tower is the easiest cause you literally can’t mess it up, but building upon it is very difficult.

So we all know how the elevators on NYUAD campus could be quite slow right? Since we can’t speed up the elevators, why don’t we build something to help kill time and create a little form of community engagement.

I think a simple version of this game being placed both inside the elevator and outside the elevator where you call it to your floor would be the perfect game to implement. Anyone can pick up where someone else left off.

People could sign their names as well to let the next person know which people have worked on the tower so far and who’s dreams and aspirations they’d be crushing if they misplace the next floor and fumble.

Below is the mockup I created. I don’t have a proper name for it but the working title was “tower of ideas” to symbolize the process of building upon a creative endeavor.

It’ll be a wall mounted device with a 21 inch LCD touchscreen. The only button needed to play the game is the red one on the top of the device. It was put there for the taller folks and people who find button presses more reliable. Alternatively, just pressing the screen works as well.

I would love to actually implement this someday, maybe I can propose it to be one of my IM class projects. This would be the both a great time killer and form of community engagement.

This was a really interesting guest visit. FIrst of all, I really liked the design of his logo and color scheme. I think it was really smart of him to make the character Ming so abstract that I can’t recognize the character but can instantly see it as soon as he mentions it. This really made sense when he talked about being an exoticsized as an Asian person.

I like how his stance on “dancing to express oneself” is “nah.” Ming’s a very sincere person and I really appreciate that.

I really like this specific thing he said, “I don’t come up with ideas, these are all things that are part of my life.” Decolonisation are things he’s lived to experience, so is everything he talks about: queerness, vulnerability, loneliness.

I love the way Ming defines choreography. I think it’s such an interesting idea to take choreography beyond dance, to apply it to things like how a classroom is arranged and how people move around obstacles or react to stimuli. It made me think about the study of wayfinding and how Ming’s work could be relevant in how people physically maneuver in the public space using signage, etc.

Last thing I noted was his methodical approach to convincing the audience to approach the stage and how he says a performance where the audience is too hesitant to approach the stage is also a performance in of itself.

After our series of why questions, our final question and answer pair was “Why is saving time important to people?” and “Saving time is important because it allows people to focus on other activities they value, such as hobbies, family time, or relaxation.”

The takeaway for me here was saving time and “family time”, so I decided to make a maze! What gave me the idea was when I got on the U6 metro to go get some dinner last night. I don’t usually take the U6 to Stadtmitte because it’s a short walk but I was feeling pretty unenergetic at the moment so I decided to give it a go. The next metro was gonna take 5 minutes, the same time I probably could use to just walk there. This gave me the idea to make a game based on saving time that has to do with the metro.

The narrative is you’re coming back from work to get back to your family. The less time you spend commuting on the metro, the more time you get to spend with your family! 

When I designed the maze, I felt like it would be too simple if it was a simple point A to Point B, so I decided to add a house key you have to collect before you reach the door. I realize this doesn’t quite make sense because your family could just open the door for you but let’s say you’re a responsible family member who wants to make sure to retrieve the house key from presumably another place you frequent.

You’re only allowed to switch lines where there are highlighted sections underneath. If you play by the rules, it should be a little more challenging than what you typically find on a kid’s menu at a restaurant.

I think Merche was probably my favorite guest out of the ones that have visited so far.

One of the most interesting things Merche talked about today was her ceramic disco booth. I thought it sounded really nice and soothing. I bet the video doesn’t quite do it justice though.

The atmosphere I could observe from watching the video looked really interesting. I don’t know if it’s because of my exposure to experimental musicians recently but I actually might be down to watch an experimental performance now. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting design choices I’ve heard recently was her choice to include spikes on the ceramic disco booth. The spikes weren’t there for aesthetic and certainly didn’t affect the music, at least not directly. The spikes were there to calm Merche’s nerves but hurt her finger tips a little. She believes she drowns out the nerves by inflicting a little bit of discomfort.

I’ve never thought to design a system to reassure someone’s stage fright with spike-y pain. That’s beyond interesting to me.

Just as I was going to ask it, Darko took the words straight from my mouth. “Would you listen to your music while cooking?”

Of course, I think we all remember her answer.

“Hell no.” 

First of all, that response was hilarious. However, I think it’s really interesting that she is strongly against casually using experimental music like this as background music. 

I remember not long ago, I felt reassured that artificial intelligence would probably take over all the manual labor jobs before they threaten the creative industries. It felt like creative industries would be the last frontier for AI to break.

When I saw the rise of Dall-E, Midjourney, and NovelAI, I felt reassured that there’s no way generative AI would be able to replace professional creatives anytime soon. The Dall-E generations are at best a good laugh and at the very least, discardable garbage. The NovelAI generations would try to mimic the style of illustrators I like but I just couldn’t feel the heart behind the drawings, because there wasn’t one. However, I realized that as time passed that people who paid money for a generative AI and put in a few keywords were pathetically calling themselves “artists” and consumers were not only disregarding, but actively supporting the severe copyright infringements

Recently, I watched a heartbreaking video of a designer that goes by “Nadestraight” online be let off from the company he worked at for 8 years. The reason why he was let off was because the company deemed his existence redundant after they had nonconsensually taken his design work and fed it into an AI model. This is not what we were promised. A commenter under the video said it best, “The future is the opposite of what AI bros promised: You will do the mundane factory work so robots can create art and music.”

This is the source of my “Why” question: Why are creatives losing their jobs to generative AI?

The past 2 years have been hell for anyone in the visual arts industry.

Clearly these “artists” are in it for the ego and fame, the same way TikTok content farmers make the same video with slight alterations to farm views and followers. These “creators” have never cared for art, they’ve only cared about the benefits of what good artists have. This truly disgusts me.

The funniest exchange I saw in the past few months was between a suspecting self-proclaimed AI “artist” and a critiquing commenter.

As if it wasn’t the perfect setup, this pathetic Ai “artist” says “not even in your dreams would you be able to make an illustration like this”. The same commenter would soon find out that this person has been a long term animator for the One Piece TV series. Boy would I pay good money to see his genuine reaction.

Here is an infographic I made to quickly educate someone who doesn’t have strong feelings about the topic.

At the end of this day, I ask myself whether creativity has lost value in the general populous’ hearts. Will non-creatives ever see the integrity behind an artist putting their soul onto the canvas just a few decades from now?

It’s hard not to lose heart when I see peers, sometimes even in the same field, argue in favor of using generative AI to “speed up” the work they need to do. If the AI was trained purely on their OWN work, maybe there’s an argument to be made! But this?

This is different. 

That work was never going to be done anyway. These people are using other people’s works and calling it their own. Stand up to these people. Let them know what they’re doing is wrong.

If that’s too hard, then the least you can do is educate yourself on the topic and follow the developments of this issue. 

I’m gonna be so honest and say this chapter was wildly difficult to read for me. There were a lot of visual metaphors without the visuals that I really just didn’t understand.

The only paragraph I felt like I fully understood was the one about “sequences of arrival of information” where they gave an example of a self-maximizing system. I think this kinda ties back to the Japanese-Buddhist idea of 初心 (Shoshin – Beginner’s Mind) we discussed. An expert on something might have some principles so deeply engraved in them that they can’t see it from the bigger picture. At least that’s my takeaway of it.

Although I only understood bits and pieces from some of the paragraphs, I think I get the general takeaway: the human mind is quick to make connections based on patterns and really good at staying that way. However, it tends to also assume that a similar but distinct pattern is the same as a pattern the mind already recognizes.

All in all this chapter was kinda confusing but I think I get the general gist.