Conceptual

Introduction

During my junior year, I experimented with expression through various mediums, culminating in this Conceptual Project. My favorite art forms included photgraphy, poetry, music, and design. During this project, I developed a sense of style in connection with my personal values. I was especially empowered by the opportunity to familiarize myself with contemporary applications such as Avid Pro Tools, Adobe products, DSLR cameras, and WordPress. These tools were not only valuable to learn in themselves, they also elevated my comfort with risk-taking, failure, humility, and healthy self-worth despite them.

Haiku

This haiku was my first experience with professional video editing, as well as my most recent encounter with haiku writing since third grade. The disparity between the ancient, somewhat familiar art of the haiku with modern photography and video applications was difficult to grapple with. On one hand, the prospect of possibly disrespecting a long-established cultural feature was terrifying, and yet on the other, the product was bound to be imperfect. Premiere Pro was also intensely uncomfortable and unfamiliar. In the end, I was happy with my technical efforts and decided that any cultural appropriation I’d committed was the responsibility of my educators.

Poetry

This free-verse poetry project perhaps had the most freedom. Though daunting at first, it was one of my favorite English experiences.

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“Garden Androids” was created in response to the Android lawn. As propaganda meant to grant consumers peace of mind, Bugdroid, the Android character, is an example of the most corrupt form of art, using personification to manufacture undeserved empathy for a product. The purpose of my poem isn’t to criticize the technology itself, but the means of marketing it and designing it in such a way that elicits addiction and dependence. In a larger sense, the message could be applied to any coercive industry under violent capitalism– that is, most of them.

The beginning of the poem relies on metaphors to emphasize the role that technology plays in replacing organic connections with synthetic ones. Both examples of lenses and seals imply that technology is used to “fix” people, with unsatisfactory results. These communicate the message that technology is not an effective replacement for emotional stability nor firsthand experience, despite our reliance on it for those very needs.

Later, the poem focuses on allusion to illustrate the relationship between creators and consumers of technology, involving profiting from starvation. The line about Rousseau refers to the phrase “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” Similarly, when adolescents are starved for the human connection they crave, the poem predicts they will be forced to gnaw on the cement statues. The second to last line suggests that furthermore, they have been trained to behave this way by the reader, as Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate.

The poem maintains a disgust for its subjects consistently, but as the narrative style shifts from reflection to prophecy, and addresses Google as opposed to its victims, the imagery becomes increasingly graphic. I intended for the poem to be sympathetic towards generation z, but condemning of conglomerates. 

My peers suggested that I add further to the poem to create a sense of resolution, but I found it fitting to end on a disturbing note. Feedback on lineation was helpful and I adjusted my uniform lineation to become less reliable towards the end. This bolstered the unresolved ending.

I attempted to echo the wordplay and tone of Jennifer Chang’s “My Own Private Patriarchy” because her reproachful attitude towards her father seemed compatible with my distaste for capitalism. In our capitalist patriarchy, the two are rather entangled.

Unlike the haiku video, this Poetry project’s audio and visual aspects were merged through the HTML coding process on Adobe Dreamweaver. I discovered that between the two of these processes, this was my favorite.

Elements and Principles of Art

Elements and Principles of Art Title Page

Design

I appreciate how applicable my education in design has been to the world around me. It’s definitely been one of my favorite subjects, and I often wonder why it’s considered an unconventional or inessential subject. I think that if everyone took a design class at some point in their lives, the world would be so much more functional and beautiful, with a conceptually literate population. Then again, the US still hasn’t mastered the use of education in general as the great equalizing force it could be. Baby steps, I suppose.

Macro Photo

The macro photo project was designed to give us experience with the macro lens, which is used for close up images. Specifically, we were told to find flowers. I aimed to capture the temporary, ethereal beauty of the flowers I chose. When you first look at the picture, there really is no focal point, which is generally frowned upon in the photography community. I found it poetic, though, to force the viewer to search the photo consciously. The angle the macro lens creates is already uncomfortable, and it was amusing to me that a picture of something as innocuous as flora could impart such a headache. I encourage you to discover how long you can look at this photo before you get dizzy.

In Photoshop, I brought out the creamy pink tones in the flowers with color balance editing and used an s-curve for lighting, which makes light (or absence of it) more dramatic.

Conceptual Photo

The instructions for our Conceptual Photo were to take a photo using the relationship between two objects and edit them in photoshop. I wanted mine to be bright and gaudy to represent my message more clearly.

For my conceptual photo, I chose a tissue box and lipstick to represent the
metaphor of rejection through advertising. The lipstick interacts with the tissue box by drawing attention to itself. I chose an angle and position meant to suggest movement– as if the box is leaking tissues– to better echo the loss within rejection. My choice in lighting accentuates the lipstick. The tissues are symbolic of rejection and the lipstick is a metaphor for the commodification of femininity. Whether treated as a stain of promiscuity or the mark of a valuable woman, female expression has always been put
into the context of the male gaze, as if it doesn’t have value in itself. This is exemplified when objectification becomes a comforting reaction to rejection. In a culture that emphasizes worth as a quantifiable aspect of a person, rejection feels like a reflection of self-worth, and so using and discarding women like tissues, especially on the basis of
something as trivial as lipstick, is reassuring.
During the Photoshop process, I applied s-curves in order to make the lighting more dramatic and used the vignette effect to emphasize the subject further. Editing the color balance was also useful, as I was able to brighten the lipstick and whiten the tissues.

Positive and Negative Space Project

This project encouraged students to consider positive and negative space, as well as the concept of symmetry. I took Ms. P’s words, “God is in the details” to heart, by making my piece as symmetrical as possible. This piece was constructed with an x-acto knife and two colors of construction paper, by cutting out shapes from one color and pasting them onto the other side. It’s only about 9 by 12 inches, and for reference, each fruit on the tree is half a centimeter in diameter, and the goddess’ nose is 3 mm wide.

The piece was inspired by the tarot card, “The Lovers.” I put a sapphic spin on it via symmetry. This was definitely my favorite design project.

Interior Linear Perspective

This was an exercise in Illustrator meant to make us more comfortable with one-point linear perspective. I found it enjoyable adding details that are true to my real bedroom, though Illustrator was a finicky application to create art in. I created lines from a single point to create the illusion of depth in this piece of work.