World-building Research Essay
Towards the end of our first semester in English, Freestyle seniors were assigned to write essays based on real-world issues of our choosing. Writing these essays would allow us to do a deep dive into a political, social, or economic problem that we were passionate about, and help us develop our abilities to effectively gather sources and make an effective argument using them. We were encouraged to pick topics that were not so big that they were impossible to cover, but that were large-scale enough that they would challenge our writing and research abilities.
My first attempts at brainstorming a subject for this project revolved around issues that had personal meaning to me, like the developing field of AI, art programs in public education, and the US mental health system. However, I soon ran in to trouble trying to form arguments around those topics, and could not see myself being fully comfortable presenting opinion pieces on them to my classmates. I realized that I wanted to focus on developing my ability to write a good essay without worrying so much about whatever greater impact my subject matter was having. So, then I began looking for topics that were interesting to me, but a little further removed from my previous personal ones.
I eventually found a topic I was really excited about, especially because it had current relevance in California. Around the time I was beginning to write my essay, the 2024 election was happening. For the first time, I was old enough to vote in the election. So, aside from casting my vote for the president, I was also able to vote on state or local affairs, like Propositions. I got the idea for my essay from looking at Proposition 33 on the 2024 ballot, a proposal that would put power over rent control more in the hands of local governments. I was intrigued by the subject of rent control, and began developing my essay around it.
I did some pretty extensive source-gathering, both through class assignments and on my own time. I learned what sites I could get the best and most reliable sources from. I also needed a refresher about citing sources in MLA format, which my english teacher was very helpful with. After gathering sources, I structured my essay in a way that ensured each supporting idea could be tied back to my main claim and so the progression of ideas would remain as clear as possible. When writing, I tend to focus in on details and fail to see the bigger picture connecting all those details, so peer-reviewing was really helpful for me during this project. I peer-reviewed my essay with classmates, my english teacher, and my dad (thank you dad!). Hearing other people’s opinions helped me find weaknesses or holes in my essay and strengthen them, showing me how valuable peer-reviewing can be to the writing process.
All in all, I really enjoyed this project. It was interesting to me how rent control is not a topic I ever would have expected myself to choose, but I think it was that choice that made this project so enjoyable to me. I discovered that I really liked learning about the cause and effects of the California housing market, and that I can really value learning and knowing things, regardless of whether I have ever researched them before or not.
You can click below to read my final World-building Research Paper
Surreal Composition Project
Introduce, explain, and provide some background to your Surreal Composition Project and how it’s related to your Research Paper
The Surreal Composition project was assigned to my fellow Freestyle seniors and I after we had finished our world-building research project. We had been learning how to use Adobe Photoshop to composite different images in our Digital Media class. The surreal composition assignment asked us to use those newfound skills to create a surreal image in Photoshop based on our world-building research essays. Surrealism is something you may be familiar with, as it is common to hear it spoken about in conjunction with artists like Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, and even Picasso. Surrealism is generally defined as, “a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.” For our photoshop compositions, our challenge would be to combine this dream-like and outside-of-the-box art style with our own world-building research topics. For me, that was rent control.
Despite making some sketches of possible layouts for my piece, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted my photoshop composition to look like when I started. But to save time, I still began gathering images off of the web to use for my composition. Since my topic was rent control, I gathered pictures of housing. Part of my essay focused on how rent control can lead to economic and social disparities. In my piece, I thought I could push those wealth differences to the extreme visually. So, the images I chose a mix of dilapidated, small and dirty homes contrasted with clean, expensive, decadent houses.
After gathering my images, I began playing around with them in Adobe Photoshop. I made great use of the crop tool, which in Photoshop is actually able to use AI to effectively cut subject out of images. This allowed me to trim my images so that only the houses were visible, not the backgrounds. By having all my houses isolated, I was able to combine houses together into longer stretches. What I ended up doing was putting all the lower-quality housing upside-down and stacking the higher-quality housing on top of it right side up. I also added and eye in the middle of the canvas to show that the warped messaging around housing is being watched by Californian citizens. Finally, I added some interesting filters and warped the shapes of the houses. In my final piece, my hope was to show how the failures of the housing market and housing/rent control laws in California have led to wealth disparities and are distorting how people view the solution to these problems. People receive lots of information from all different sources of media, and if that information isn’t correct about what the best solution is, it can be incredibly damaging when Californians need to vote together on measures that could completely change the way the housing market operates.
You can click the image below to view the artist statement I wrote for my Surreal Composition, which explains in better depth how I created the piece using Photoshop.
Click the image below to view my Final Surreal Composition
Click below to view my project in Adobe Photoshop
World-building Group Project
The final part of the World-building project involved partnering with classmates to a create a large-scale narrative that becomes a pitch presentation and plan for translation into an original piece of media. For example, my group of four decided to create a pitch for an animated music video that would display our science fiction story, titled Paradox VI (Six).
We began this process by combining out efforts to brainstorm and research different topics and types of media, eventually landing on our final sci-fi idea. The basic plot of our story can be described in the following log line:
“In a 21st-century city where AI technology powers monopolies and a corrupt government, a lonely girl becomes a spy for a bitter businessman wanting to tear down his rivals, seeking to expose the truth about the misuse of AI and hold those responsible accountable.”
During the process, we created a google doc to help us organize our thoughts. The document came out to a grand total of 55 pages, which is why I have decided that including it on the this webpage would be a bit much. However, during the process, each students completed several reflections on how we felt the project was progressing. This helped our teacher grade us on the collaboration elements of the projects by giving us a chance to talk about how we each contributed to different parts of the projects. You can look at my first 2 reflections below to better understand how I contributed to my group during the process.
Reflection #1
Reflection #2
The final product of our World-building projects was a pitch presentation, given by each group to all of the PM Seniors. The presentation was recorded, and then sent over to our Digital Media class so that we could edit the recording as a group. My part of the group editing involved inputing our slides to the project and creating an animated intro. However, I helped with other parts of the project as well as needed. For example, at one point our entire group was gathered around our computer to try and figure out how to crop the video footage so that we had 4 separate videos of each group member that we could freely move around. Click below to view our group’s World Building Presentation video:
After presenting, I wrote a final 3rd reflection on the presentation part of the project. You can click below to view my reflection and final thoughts on the World-Building project. Overall, I really enjoyed the project, and it was a great way to grow my creative collaboration skills before I move on to college.
Reflection #3
