The purpose of my Conceptual Website is as a collection of all my projects I do at Freestyle. In Design, I had to have my Transport Project done. For English, I had to have my poetry that I wrote. And for Digital Media, I had to have this website with all of my experimental music and poetry videos. I put all of my projects in this website to complete the project as a whole. From the Conceptual Unit I learned to really think outside the box and convey emotion without being obvious or cliché. I really enjoyed the whole experience. I learned so much and I think I can say I learned to think a little differently which has really changed my perspective and understanding about little things in daily life.

I wrote an Ekphrastic Poem which is a poem that describes a work of art in some way. Then I wrote a Free Verse Poem which I got inspiration from a common human feeling. And lastly I wrote my Spoken Word Poem which is a big part of my growing up put in the form of poetry. Through making videos of these poems, I learned to write poetry that flows well and in some cases, good visual connections that I can use pictures for in my videos. I really enjoyed just putting it all together and watching my hard work come to life.

This is my Ekphrastic Poem:

Stack of Sticks

Fragile

Standing on a thousand tiny needles

Thin

Starving in the pale light

Alone

Cast away from all interest

But touch me,

I will stand.

Try to embrace me,

I will hurt you.

My Free Verse Poem is bases off of the human feeling of always wanting more.

I valued the Spoken Word Poetry Project because I wrote a poem that means a lot to me as it contains some parts of my life that made me grow up and become who I am today. Making a Video for this Poem really helped to let it hit my listeners in a good way.

When I wrote the haiku, I felt like it just needed something more to make it sink in. Enhancing it with this video that I made in Digital Media really did just that. With the music, it gave a calming effect which is exactly what I was going for and the picture added the mysteriousness. As this was the first project I did like this, it was somewhat challenging because of all the different forms of art that went into the production. I really enjoyed combining music making and video editing and my haiku and the pretty picture I took all in a 30 second video.

Haiku Intro

Process Desription

This is a screenshot of my haiku video production.

The Transport Photo assignment was to take a picture of a wheel or something with a wheel in the picture in some form from an interesting angle. It had to be a wheel that could move but wasn't motorized. Then we edited the photo in Photoshop.

My photograph was of a shopping cart wheel with a photographer in the background. It was taken in the evening light in a parking lot. I layed on the ground to take the picture from ground level. I wanted the wheel to be the main focus but have the photographer add personality and a story to the picture. I thought that the pictures I took of rollerblades would turn out better but when I started photographing the shopping cart wheels, they looked really interesting to me with all of the metal bars and this particular picture with the photographer.

One thing that I can for sure take away from this assignment is that I’m getting the hang of selections. I’m not an expert yet but I’m getting better at it. I tried to neutralize the very vibrant colors in the background to try to bring more attention to the wheel. I had to remove some ugly gum spots that were on the sidewalk.

Conceptual Art Production

I am exploring the feeling of envy through the experience of traveling to a new place.

In the photograph, I have a toy alien standing in a puddle of green paint on a map. The map represents travel while the alien represents new as when someone travels to a new place, they not only feel like an alien, they are considered one. The puddle of green paint represents envy as the alien is standing, surrounded by this envy from traveling to a new place. I made sure that both the alien and some of the map was in focus. I angled the camera almost parallel to the ground so that we could see the detail of the alien. Being close to the alien and the map adds to my concept because we can see the interaction between the alien being stuck in the puddle of envy and the map.

The map created a feeling of lost with all of the many roads. The alien is the sense of misplace and not belonging which demonstrates being new. The paint is the sticky feeling of envy.

The only things I adjusted in Photoshop was making the greens more vibrant and cropping around the top right.

For my Parody Music, I chose the original song because it’s fun and upbeat and I just remember listening to it as a kid. I didn’t know what to write my own lyrics about and I happened to be doing homework so that’s what I wrote about. In Pro Tools, I had to remove, to the extent that I possibly could, the original vocals so that I could attempt to sing my own lyrics over any remnants of the originals. Once I had it recorded in, I normalized and then was able to hear myself sing about the struggles of homework.

My experimental music was inspired by mystery. It combines a distressed feeling with sadness and doom.