{"id":1699,"date":"2015-06-30T15:36:03","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T15:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2015-07-16T15:59:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T15:59:37","slug":"student-profile-robin-hunter-bsc-creative-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1699","title":{"rendered":"Student profile: Robin Hunter, BSc Creative Computing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Third year BSc Creative Computing student Robin Hunter talks to\u00a0Blog.Doc about electronic music software, and why Goldsmiths has been the perfect environment for his development.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the best electronic music in the world was made on Playstations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robin Hunter is explaining to me the background of his latest project. \u201cIf you look at what Simon Reynolds calls the\u00a0Hardcore Continuum<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the music that started with acid house in the late 80s, hardcore rave and then later grime and dubstep \u2013 this was all made using cheapo electronics and software.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the problem now is that we have industry-standard music production software likeLogic<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ableton<\/a>. They\u2019re so complex and feature-heavy, it\u2019s like buying a Ferrari just for driving to\u00a0the shops. If you\u2019re an aspiring musician you have to pay so much for these really powerful systems, but unless you have formal training in how to use it, you\u2019ll barely use all the features.\u00a0So I\u2019m interested in creating a software that\u2019s much simpler but achieves pretty much the same results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robin\u2019s latest project,\u00a0OCEAN, has just won the ‘best product’ prize at\u00a0Generation<\/em><\/a>, Goldsmiths Computing\u2019s undergraduate show. It\u2019s an\u00a0online music production platform that allows people to work on the same track at the same time,\u00a0in the same way that Google Docs works.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe friends I make music with, they live all over London, so it\u2019s not always convenient to meet up. But at the moment it\u2019s a real hassle if you want to use the internet to collaborate on tracks. You have to send these massive files to each other on Dropbox and it takes forever. But with OCEAN, it\u2019s all happening live. I can be working on a track and my friends are listening to it and adding to it at exactly the same time. And it\u2019s really simple and intuitive to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robin grew up in Chester and did Media, Business and ICT at \u2018A\u2019 level. He was really into making music, and studied Music Technology for a year but got disillusioned.\u00a0\u201cI was making\u00a0music that was really experimental. I don\u2019t think my teachers understood what I was doing, really. And I looked into studying\u00a0Creative Sound Design<\/a>\u00a0at the Academy of Contemporary Music, but I realised that that would be a one-way ticket to not getting a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was also really interested in Media \u2013 about how the internet has changed things so much. I thought that\u2019s what I\u2019d probably study at university. But I got interested in the internet pioneers, people like\u00a0Jack Dorsey<\/a>, and I realised I didn\u2019t want to just\u00a0write<\/em>\u00a0about these people. I wanted to\u00a0be<\/em>\u00a0one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI found Goldsmiths and saw their\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0about computing courses, which said that Goldsmiths doesn\u2019t teach you computer science by forcing you to create fake accounting systems for imaginary businesses (like most computing courses do), but gives you the freedom to create the things that you are really interested in. So I knew this was the place for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that\u00a0James Blake<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Blur<\/a>\u00a0had been to Goldsmiths, and because so much of the music I love was coming out of London, I really wanted to be here. New Cross isn\u2019t the most beautiful\u00a0place in the world, but it\u2019s got everything you need for being a student, and it\u2019s really easy to get into central London and Shoreditch.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what next?\u00a0Over the summer, Robin will be a Technology Design for Fjord\u00a0https:\/\/www.fjordnet.com<\/a>\u00a0Fjord contacted Robin after seeing his work on the DoC website and offered him an 8 week intern placement focusing on web development, consultancy and design.<\/p>\n

His 2nd year project,\u00a0DATA GLOBE<\/a>, was picked to exhibit at\u00a0last year<\/a>\u2018s undergraduate show. It has been the poster images for Generation for the last two years. His tutor, Mick Grierson, was impressed with\u00a0his\u00a0work and recommended him\u00a0to colleagues at Goldsmiths\u2019\u00a0Interaction Research Studio<\/a>. \u201cThey got me working on the top floor of the Ben Pimlott Building for one day a week during term time, and then for two months over the summer, and they\u00a0gave me a great salary. Hopefully working with EAVI this summer will be just as rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

And after summer?\u00a0\u201cI love Goldsmiths. I really want to stay, so I\u2019m going to try to get on a Master\u2019s course. I\u2019m also\u00a0looking at how to take OCEAN to market.\u00a0I think it\u2019s got real potential, in the same way that Instagram takes the core of what Photoshop does, but makes it instant and really simple to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

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  Third year BSc Creative Computing student Robin Hunter talks to\u00a0Blog.Doc about electronic music software, and why Goldsmiths has been the perfect environment for his development. \u201cSome of the best electronic music in the world was made on Playstations.\u201d Robin Hunter is explaining to me the background of his latest project. \u201cIf you look at … Continue reading Student profile: Robin Hunter, BSc Creative Computing<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[70,110,108],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1736,"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}