Who Am I?

The purpose of this unit was to explore our core values and experiences by creatively displaying them. In English, we set the base of this project by writing two essays: A personal essay that explored our core values, and a lyrical essay that touched on the experiences of a person different from us. For design, we learned HDR photography, deconstructing and reworking one of our images. In Digital Media we made two videos, one to portray one of own perspectives, and another to explore 3D animation.

lyrical essay

This Lyrical Essay topic was made to give insight into the lives of a person that is different from me. For my project, I interviewed a woman, and turned her experiences into a "lyrical essay", a writing piece that utilizes various poetic structures.  The instructions for the essay said to use a second person perspective, but I chose to use first person, as I felt that it would better convey the experiences that the person is going through.

I want that pussy.

The group of boys say to me. I look at their eyes with my own, the eyes that my mom had called beautiful when I was younger. I look at their eyes but they do not look at mine. Their winking eyes wander in search of fuel for the right hand. There’s something to say but I can’t cough it up.

A “thank you” would egg them on, feeding into their desire to think that American girls are easy, that I’m just a bitch to pass around a pack of wolves that can’t seem to control their own primal instincts.

A simple “fuck off” could get them to shut up, but it wouldn’t stop them from drooling over my body, or get them to delete the pictures of my ass off of their phones. It would also make me seem mean. I’m known as a nice person, and I don’t want that reputation ruined because of some out of line remarks.

“I’m more than just a body”, I say to myself, and keep walking.

I walk past the open-aired bar, greeted by the smell of beer and masculinity problems. A reflection in a window paints the scene behind me. My glance catches the stares of thirty, forty, fifty, sixty year olds. My skin crawls as I wonder if it would be better to be completely oblivious to their stares.

Do they know how old I am? Do they know that I’m not a toy?

I can already hear the school halls whisper to me as I have sex for the first time. Slut. The word moves through me as I do what is expected of me as a girl that is dating a boy. Slut. Were you even ready yet? Mouths ask me a question that I can’t even answer. Slut. Judgmental eyes weigh down on me as I try to get from point A to point B. Slut. Four scarlet letters are branded against my forehead, a gift for fulfilling an expectation.

Am I just a body?

The use of vulgariy in this essay seemed necessary, as this is not a clean topic. I chose to make it very straightforward and matter of fact so that story portrayed the experiences of my interviewee as accurately as possible. Writing about someone that is different than me has helped me realized the effects of my own experiences and my privileges.

photo reconstruction

In design, we experimented with interesting angles, a shallow depth of field, and incorporating elements of art into single object photos. For this project, I took a photo of the bridge of my guitar, using the strings to create leading lines and taking the photo in a shallow depth of field to create a blurred surrounding.

Photo of Conceptual Art

We took our photos to the next level by turning our digital photos into real life ones. To make them more interesting and give them more depth, we deconstructed and reassembled the photos. I chose to give my photo a jagged look be separating the individual pieces and cutting up the artboard. This project taught me use hands-on manipulation to make my photos more interesting.

Photo of Conceptual Art

3d video

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This video takes the photo we took for design and turned into a dynamic 3D animation.  For the video, we utilized the 3D capabilities of Adobe After Effects, further improving our video editing skills.

perspective video

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This video was created to show a perspective that I have.  We recorded the minute long piece and turned it into a video created in Premier Pro.  This project gave me a better idea of the things that I value the most.