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Video Closed Captions

(music)

Ge Wang:
I'm Ge Wang. I went to graduate school at

Ge Wang:
Princeton University in computer science, and now I am an assistant

Ge Wang:
professor at Stanford University in the Center for

Ge Wang:
Computer Research and Music and Acoustics.

Ge Wang:
I'd say my work is, through research and technology,

Ge Wang:
to change the way people go about making music,

Ge Wang:
listening to music, and interacting and relating to each other through music.

Ge Wang:
Having been affected personally so much by music and

Ge Wang:
how music has shaped my life, I am driven to deeply explore

Ge Wang:
what that can mean for other people.

Ge Wang:
Computer music combines my two loves. As a teacher,

Ge Wang:
the hope is that I can really transfer that passion that I

Ge Wang:
have to the student.

Ge Wang:
I want them leaving inspired and fired up to go experiment

Ge Wang:
and work in that space.

Ge Wang:
I am also the cofounder and the chief creative officer of Smule.

Ge Wang:
We have been around for a year, and we have made several apps

Ge Wang:
for the iPhone that really deeply explore the iPhone as a

Ge Wang:
platform for bringing people together through music and

Ge Wang:
technology. The way we do that is leverage

Ge Wang:
the ideas and the vision we have in computer music and research

Ge Wang:
and, through the iPhone, bring it out to as wide of an audience as we can.

Ge Wang:
The Ocarina is an application for the iPhone that transforms

Ge Wang:
the iPhone into a flute-like instrument.

Ge Wang:
The other part of the Ocarina is that it allows its users to

Ge Wang:
hear one another around the world.

Ge Wang:
One of the comments in iTunes about the Ocarina application

Ge Wang:
was from a soldier in Iraq who on his nights off actually used

Ge Wang:
the Ocarina to listen to others play music around the world.

Ge Wang:
To know that someone found that type of value in something that

Ge Wang:
you've made is beyond a wonderful feeling.

Ge Wang:
I feel inspired by the simple joy of building things together

Ge Wang:
and also I think just by music and whatever form it comes in.

Ge Wang:
Also perhaps, in a less direct way,

Ge Wang:
I do feel like I derive a lot of inspiration from eating.

Ge Wang:
I love to eat.

Ge Wang:
I miss Hoagie Haven a lot for that very reason.

Ge Wang:
Other than eating, gee, I don't know, more eating?

Ge Wang:
At the end of the day, it's important to keep in mind

Ge Wang:
always that what we do can be fun and to never really lose

Ge Wang:
that sense of fun and joy in exploring things.

Ge Wang:
I think being an engineer is partly just a problem-solving

Ge Wang:
mindset and kind of a spirit of investigating a problem deeply

Ge Wang:
and looking for solutions creatively. I am Ge Wang,

Ge Wang:
and I am a Princeton Engineer.

(music)