Welcome to my conceptual website. This website is a compilation of the work I have done in the first quarter at Freestyle Academy, integrating all three of our courses to create in-depth productions. We used content from English assignments and projects to then enhance in digital media using software such as Adobe Premier Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Pro Tools 12, and we used Adobe Dreamweaver to design the website itself. In the conceptual unit we focused on the idea of conceptual art and how it can be effective in communicating feelings and ideas simplistically or abstractly. We detoured from conceptual art in our poetry unit, the products of which can be found in the Poetry section of this website. In the art section you will find the photography created in Design taken with a Freestyle provided camera and edited using Adobe Photoshop.

These are my poem productions made in digital media with poetry content from English. In english we studied the structure of different forms of poetry such as free verse, ekphrastic, haiku, and spoken word.

This is the ekphrastic poem that I wrote in English after our fieldtrip to to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a work of art, with the goal of expanding the meaning of the work of art through the viewer's perception and in-depth analysis. My ekphrastic poem is in response to an interacive work of art by Brian Eno title "Compact Forest Proposal". The work was created by using a dark room with string lights hanging from the ceiling and pooling in mesh bags on the floor, with a barely visible mannequin dressed in white placed standing in the far right corner of the room, in almost complete darkness. Through my ekpharstic poem I wanted to communicate the mixture of fear and curiousity that the piece evoked, as well as the peacefulness from the warm light.

The Maybe Man

Vision expanding to include movement
Of non moving men.
The fear of silence from a passive person
Passive plastic person:
Still fear-
Still, fear.
Light pooling and leading
A concrete box flooding and rippling.
Why do I want to touch him?

This is my haiku production from the haiku unit in english. We received concept statemenst that randomly paired an emotion to an experience and then wrote a haiku based off of this statement using elements of haiku writing such as the "Kigo", the cutting word in the middle of the haiku, and syllable constraints.
After writing the haiku and taking my own photo (on my iPhone) as a background, I enhanced the haiku in digital media by recording myself reading it using Pro Tools. I then added royalty free music to my voice recording to heighten the production and took this final mix from Pro Tools to Premier Pro in order to make a video using moving text, audio and imagery.

The concept statement that I based my photo haiku off of was "I am exploring the feeling of embarrassment through the experience of preserving memories". The object I selected to represent this concept was my uppermost right rib, which I had to get removed in 2016. I wrote the poem based on this experience, and backed it with an image of my skin very close up, which is intended to make the viewer uncomfortable, ashamed and slightly disoriented, which is what embarrassment feels like to me, a very naked feeling.

I enhanced the haiku in digital media by recording myself reading it using Pro Tools, and then creating a video with my voice over my image and clarifying text using Adobe Premiere Pro.

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

For my transport object I wanted to choose a wheeled object that is not often seen, something that is unusual and unexpected. I remembered that my brother owns a “Flowboard”, which is a skateboard that has 16 wheels, and unfortunately is extremely ineffective as a means of transport, but is intended for this purpose. I like my final image because the depth of focus puts the viewers attention on the first wheel in a row of 8 wheels, only three of which can be percepted. When the viewer first looks at it, it looks like an ordinary skateboard, so it is disorienting and interesting (to me) that there are two more wheels visible in the background. The lighting of the photo is also appealing to me because I took the photo in the evening so it is somewhat warm but not overly saturated, and I attempted to utilize the rule of thirds with the focal point being the bolt that secures the wheel to the truck in the left third third of the photo. The variance of texture is also something that I wanted to accentuate, and it can be seen by the contrast between the smooth, shiny reflectiveness of the trucks next the the dirty, possibly moldy wheels of the skateboard (which has been ridden once, and has been sitting in an open shed in the elements). There were a few dark objects visible but not in clarity in the background that were distracting, so I removed them using content aware fill.

Conceptual Art Production

"I am exploring the feeling of embarrassment throiugh the experience of preserving memories"

 

The staging of my photo was purposeful in portraying a feeling of being displayed in an uncomfortable situation. The lines made by the shadows from the clothesline bars are meant to represent a cage or cell, which implies being trapped and I made these lines prominent by using a white sheet draped directly behind the underwear for a clean background, the whiteness of which accentuates the glaring yellow of the (artificial) pee. I heightened this color contrast by using pale-colored children’s underwear to bring a spotlight to the bright yellow, which is intended to make the viewer uncomfortable and force them to focus on something vulnerable. The clothespins are not meant to be the central focus of the photo, therefore they are bland and neutral and color, but they are also intended to look strong and industrious in comparison to the small underwear and represent the preservation of memories and how it can be unwanted in the case of an embarrassing memory.

The objects in my photo are meant to encapsulate a feeling of embarrassment and shame through being exposed and displayed, so I used children’s underwear stained with pee (actually yellow paint and apple juice) to represent embarrassment in its most primitive and genuine form, noticing that the purest form of embarrassment is that of a child because children do not have as many standards and expectations imposed upon them, and therefore have very little to be embarrassed about. I used the clothesline and clothespins to represent the permanence and effort to preserve the ‘tainted’ and embarrassing memory, holding up the metaphorical memory and displaying it against the stark background so that it is uncomfortably visible.

In digital media we have learned how to create music with virtual instruments and how to maneuver features of Pro Tools.

This song is a parody of Ludacris' verse in Justin Bieber's "Baby", and is about plucking a squirrel from the wild to be a pet/friend and consequently contracting rabies. The process of recording this was all done in Pro Tools, and took several steps. Firstly, we downloaded the original music to be parodied from Youtube. The next task was to remove the vocals from the original track so as to insert our own voices to the beat, and we did this by duplicating the track into mono tracks and polarizing one side, while upping the bass on the original track. We then recorded ourselves (or in my case a friend) singing our parody verses over the beat and adding reverb to blend the tracks as

My inspiration for this song was the feeling of power, so I wanted it to sound very deep and ominous, as power is often a causal factor or predecessor to destruction. Since it was created using only virtual instruments on Pro Tools, I thought that it should sound somewhat dystopian and robotic, which is a theme we also explore in english through reading George Orwell’s 1984, a book whose central theme is power and the following abuse of power.