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The purpose of this conceptual project was to showcase all that we have created here at freestyle in the past couple months. We were assigned projects in each class relating to the things we were learning in each individual class. For Design we photographed objects for a project about transportation. In English we wrote different kinds of poetry, for example we wrote a haiku and a free verse poem. In Digital Media we learned how to use different programs and applications. A couple of the main programs we used were Pro Tools, a music making application, and Adobe After Effects, a video editing software. Artistically I learned that subtlety is key when working with programs and that the real art must come from the original picture or idea.

Poems

We created many types of poems in our english class some of which were a free verse, an ekphrastic, and spoken word poem. In our Digital Media class we added to the content of the poems by creating videos and adding music to readings of the poems. We used applications like Pro Tools and Adobe After Effects to create the music and videos.

Ekphrastic Poem

Earlier in the year we visited the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. After viewing many exhibits we assigned to write a ekphrastic poem. Ekphrastic means a vivid description of a piece of art. We were given a choice of what artwork we could choose, and I choose the piece shown below. This piece was representing a story which could be taken two ways, both ways being very different. I tried to capture this difference in my poem and really describe what the art makes you feel as oppose to only a physical description.

Thumbnail of Ekphrastic Poem image. Thumbnail of Ekphrastic Poem image.
Click on image to see larger version

Void or Blanket
Surrounded, Encompassed
Like the rings of a tree
The matte coats darkening the mood
Each the same
From snout to tail
Protecting or petrifying
The innocent and pure at risk
The black void
A comforting blanket
Two sides mixed in
Each only distinguishable to the individual
Void or blanket

Free Verse Poem

 

My free verse poem was written from a concept statement picked out randomly from a bag. The concept statement that I received was the feeling of dread through the need to share. For this poem I wanted to put the viewer in the scenario of getting up in front of the class to present something. I wanted the viewer to feel out of place because when you dread something you feel as if there is no reason to be doing what you are doing. I also wanted to show conflicting objects like oil and water to show the barrier between someone who doesn't want to share something and the people he needs to share something with. I valued the idea of thinking of things in different ways to prove a point but in a way not noticed before.

For my spoken word poem I was sitting in my history class and I had to go. There was a lot of time left in class and we were given free time to work on anything, so I wrote a poem about needing to go to the bathroom. To create a visual aspect of the poem we were given the assignment of editing some words in the poem to appear on screen. To do this we used Premier Pro, and the rest was up to each individual person to play with what minipulation of words they could do to add to the poem.

Haiku

The assignment for this Haiku video project was to create a haiku from an original concept statement which we choose out of a bag in class. My concept statement was the feeling of dread through the experience of the need to share. For my song selection I wanted to do to choose something that would catch the viewer off guard as well as using the strikes to get the viewers to hear the anxiety striking not just read it. I really enjoyed freedom of creating the song in Pro Tools because of the thousands of sound samples we got to choose from. I also enjoyed using the video editor Primer Pro because I am sure learning how to edit videos will help me in whatever I may end up pursuing as a career.

This is a screenshot of my Haiku video production in Premiere Pro.

This is a screenshot of my Haiku video production in Premiere Pro.
Art
Transport Art Production
This is a photo of a wheel from a wave board, with chipped red paint. This is a photo of a wheel from a wave board, with chipped red paint.
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The assignment was to take pictures of a man powered transportation vehicle that has wheels, at an interesting angle. The object in my photograph was a wave board that my family has had for about seven years. My older brothers used the wave boards much more than I did and wanted to add their own customization to the board, so they spray painted it with different colors. The paint is very old and that is why in the photo the viewer can see the paint chipping off. One of the main reasons I wanted to use the waveboard was because of the interesting color changes that would go on between the chipping paint and the silver metal underneath. For the angle I shot the photograph at, I wanted to match the angle that the wave board was resting at. This particular angle gave the picture a silhouette of the object in the background creating a very interesting photo. For lighting I took the photograph in the sun light when the sun was near setting. that is why the full shadow isn’t in the photo. I thought that by shooting close to sunset I would get cool shadows and light in between blinding and too dark to see. The changes I made in Photoshop were very subtle. One specific change I made was to increase the saturation of the photo. The reason why I wanted to increase the saturation was to increase the contrast between the chipped paint and the silver of the metal even more. I learned how to add different layers for saturation and use the eye button to see the previous image and see the photo with the changes without officially applying them. Another thing I edited was a string that hung down from the wheel. The string was yellow and brought more attention to itself than to the wheel. To get rid of the string I used the spot healing band aid tool.

Conceptual Art Production
This is my diptich CHANGE WHEN MAKE DIPTICH This is my diptich which is a picture of a spider looking through a keyhole.
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I am exploring the feeling of dread through the need to share. The main object in my photograph is the spider and the outline of the key hole that I am photographing. The key hole represents the idea being locked inside myself and not wanting to share anything with other people. The spider is suppose to represent the fear in my concept statement, the spider is specific to me because I don’t like spiders. Also the spider is on lime green web because the bright color represents openness and the spider is in the lime green web because the statement shows that when a person opens up or is being forced to open up they feel dread. I tried to create a specific mood with the lighting where the main focus of the flashlight was on the spider, by doing this I wanted to make it feel as if the only thing in the picture is a spider and that the fear from the spider overpowers everything else. I shot the photo as a portrait to try to include the most amount of content in the photo rather than just the more blackness on the outside of the photo. The keyhole represents the a person wanting to stay locked within themselves.

A keyhole generally is for a door and by having the door closed it doesn’t allow anything to get past. The idea of the keyhole is to show that there is a blocked path between other people whom a person would normally share stuff with. The spider on the other side of the door represents the dread and fear of what opening up the door will cause. The curtains are drawn on the window behind to help portray a dark and gloomy looking room to try and create more of a gloomy into the room.

Music

The goal of the parody music project was to get a song or part of a song of the internet, remove the vocals from the original song, and replace it with original lyrics sung by ourselves or people we know. TO remove the vocals from the original song we used the program Pro Tools, and by damping the the higher frequencies, as well some other complicated steps, we managed to remove almost all of the vocals. The lyrics that I wrote to go to the song were about wanting to sleep because I started to write it in the morning when all I wanted to do was sleep. To add to the comedy of my parody I wanted to try to sing the song in the highest voice possible, and set it to the highest reverb possible, which adds echo to the recording.. After recording myself singing I touched up the volume levels of the song and my singing and the song was finished.