This section of my website is dedicated to my conceptual project. We had many tasks during this section and each class had its own project for us to (individually) complete. In English, we were given a concept statement that we had to build off of in projects for all of our classes. For English, we had to use this concept statement to write a poem. In Design, we had to use the photography skills that we learned to take a picture that represented our concept statement that we were given in English. And in Web/Audio, we had to pull the projects from all of our other classes together as well as make this section of our website (for our concept statement/conceptual project).

I am exploring the feeling of disbelief through the experience of accepting myself.

My concept statement is “I am exploring the feeling of disbelief through the experience of accepting myself.” The first thing that I thought of when I was given this statement was how people view themselves in a rather negative way (you are your own worst enemy kind of thing). I used a broken compact makeup mirror to represent this. I chose to represent this part of my concept statement with this object because people always find faults in their appearance (symbolized by the broken mirror) and they want to fix/hide those flaws (symbolized by the makeup). However, the second part of my concept statement states “through the experience of accepting myself.” The way I represented this was through color. Instead of just having a broken mirror (which is rather depressing looking), I colored in the mirror so when it was shattered, it looked beautiful. This symbolized how everyone has their own flaws, but if you accept yourself for who you are, you will be able to see your true colors/beauty. The setting of my photo was on a/my bathroom floor. I thought that this was an appropriate setting/background because bathrooms are where people usually get ready (meaning that they look at themselves a lot while in the bathroom), this ties in with my take on my concept statement (which was on self appearance). I also took this picture in a dimmer lighting and at an angle. I did this to try to make the mirror look like it was dropped out of shock, this ties in with the part of  my concept statement that states “I am exploring the feeling of disbelief.”

There were not many steps in my Photoshop process. The main thing that I learned about was how to use the all mighty pen tool (which I feel pretty proud of). However, I didn’t use this skill in my final project. Like I said earlier, there were not many steps in my Photoshop process, the only edits that I made (on my final photo) were the basic edits (brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, value).

My photo exemplifies the concept statement from English in many ways. I explained a lot of the symbolism in my first paragraph. My photo is of a colorful, shattered compact makeup mirror that is on a/my bathroom floor. The shattered mirror symbolizes how people always judge themselves and focus on their flaws. The shattered mirror symbolizes this because in a lot of shows (especially cartoons), when someone is ugly, the mirror they look in shatters. The makeup also ties into this because people always want to cover up their flaws. However, when you accept yourself for who you are, that's when your true colors show. This is symbolized by the colorful glass.

 

All of my poems are very different, yet they still kind of connect in certain ways. The first poem (my 10 line poem) is titled "Questions" and it is about my conceptual statement. The second poem (my ekphrastic poem) is titled "Blank" and I wrote it as a response to a piece of art (of my choosing) that I saw on our field trip. The last poem (my spoken word poem) is titled "Dear Girl in the Mirror" and I wrote this poem about the growing pains of today's youth and how it changes a person's view on themself. I really enjoyed the poetry unit so I had a lot of fun creating all of these poems. I faced certain problems while writing each poem, but after many drafts, I finally produced these three poems that I am rather proud of.

You can click on each thumbnail to read my poem, see the art work I created to go with it, and to hear me read my poem. I hope you enjoy!

In English, we had to randomly choose two pieces of paper that said two things to fill in the statement "I am exploring the feeling of _____ through the experience of _____." My statement ended up being "I am exploring the feeling of disbelief through the experience of accepting." I was able to enhance this project in Web/Audio by making a video (the video below) in Flash.

I chose this visual because I wanted to symbolize how you need to look inside of yourseld in order to find the real you. I symbolized this by making my focal point a (lunch)box. This (lunch)box also has the Batman logo on it; that logo is not a random part of the photo. I am a huge comic book nerd so when I read my concept statement, I thought of Batman. I thought of him because he wears a mask and looks a certain way on the outside, but his morals and what he is fighting for is hidden on the inside.

The photo above shows what I used to create and edit my photo haiku video (the system I used is called Flash). In Flash, I had to impoirt both audio files and the image I took. I then had to layer the images to get the video to look the way I wanted it to. I also had to put in the audio and fix the audio to my liking (by adding faders and what not).

 

My music was inspired just from this program and this class. It is a very weird, yet catchy song that I think is rather fun. I mainly combined other music/songs in order to make it as well as recording my voice and my other friend's voice. The main message that I am trying to express is that you have to give yourself some freedom and just have fun; don't take everything so seriously.

I hope you enjoy!