Sarah Choi – Looking Outwards – 10

https://www.smule.com/

Smule is a startup company, co-founded by Ge Wang, exploring social mobile music-making into a unique platform for research and development combining music and computational algorithms. Ge Wang, Stanford’s assistant professor at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), has made a difference in combining programming languages and interactive software with computational music. 

This music-making application through social media gives a space for the public to portray their individual styles by showing how they think, work, and play through sound and music. Smule’s algorithm generates sounds and video from one’s device and synchronizes the two streams in real-time. It uses audio processing to create more effects such as duets, so one doesn’t have to go through the process of editing his or her own video and sound. It also has available transitions to make the music more of one’s own. 

Ge Wang talks a lot about how technology shapes us to be more individualistic and how we can use technology to express ourselves to the public. Because of this, Smule’s final form manifests Ge Wang’s passion to create a platform for everyone to do exactly this. His application has been able to reach millions as people appreciate others’ true art forms.