Author Archives: Andy Zhang

Blog Post #2

Today I finally got my new headphones, the Sony XM4s, and how perfect it is to write about how technology affected my relationship with music. I bought my first MP3 when I was a sophomore in highschool, a refurbished Sandisk mp3 player. Soon after I purchased my first earphones, Sony earbuds that had these large, colorful earclips. Those were popular in my school because they didn’t fall off that easily, and had expressive bright colors. Smartphones started to enter the scene during my senior year, but back then cheaper smartphones didn’t have much storage, and data was more expensive, so I sticked to the mp3.

It wasn’t until freshman year in college that a friend of mine bought a pair of flagship bose active noise cancelling headphones(this was 10 years ago, I took a long break after freshman year of college). I still remember how the same songs I listened to on the regular ear buds sounded like a different song on the big headphones. There were sounds and details that I never noticed was there, it sounded so good I felt like tearing up listening to it.

fast forward to this afternoon, after watching a dozen of youtube reviews, I finally purchased and received my Sony ANC XM4 headphones. The different between these and my previous headphones(also Sony ANCs) wasn’t as big, but it did remind me of the first time I put on a pair of serious headphones. I am extremely grateful of the technological advanced over the years, and I look forward to where it’ll take us in the future.

Blog Post #1(repost)

After reading these two papers, I find myself connecting more with Sack’s paper of how brain-science interacts with one’s artistic preferences. According to Sacks’s examples and prior knowledge, brain science is very closely related with one’s musical identity. Medical cases have shown that physical changes to the brain can alter an individual’s way of thinking. I think of it as a back-and-forth mutual relationship where our thoughts are influenced by the physical structure and stimulants from our brain, and what we think about, the neuron connections we build will change the physical structures of our brain, affecting our future thinking.

Our understanding of the brain and how it relates to our mind is actually somewhat limited. Modern science is based on the principle that in order to understand the whole, we will take it apart and see what the individual pieces do to understand how it works. It’s difficult to do that with the mind as you cannot really take it apart. We can see the sophisticated neuron networks firing signals but we can only guess what each area does. Most of our understanding is based on observations of behavior, which as we can see in Sack’s examples, probably plays a critical role. It will take more time and investigation to further our understanding of the brain and its relationship with art.

Andy Zhang Introduction

Hello, my name is Andy and this is my last semester here at LaGuardia. I have to say I find almost all courses I’ve took interesting in one way or another. Bring a film and tv major, the core classes definitely satisfies my curiosity the most. Other than movies, I do also enjoy racket sports tennis and badminton and a bit of table tennis. I try my best to listen to all types of music. I know we all have our favorites, but I don’t like dismissing a certain genre just because I didn’t connect with it right away. I am always looking for music that have the right amount of funk. To me a piece of music sounds good when it’s bringing something new but still feels familiar. That sensation when it hits a part of your brain thats never been connected before is amazing.